European Grand Prix : Friday Practice Session 1

Germany’s Nico Rosberg topped the Friday Practice Session 1 ahead of the two McLarens in Valencia clocking a time of 1:41.175. Hamilton was .164 seconds behind of the Mercedes GP driver with his teammate following him with a time of 1:41.383.

NICO Roseberg

However it is still early to predict who will clinch the pole as seen in the previous races also. Teams are trying to get adjusted to the track conditions on this temporary circuit where it is hard to predict how the track will behave based on the previous year’s records. Many drivers ran wide in the Turn Two because of the greenery of the track (same case as of Montreal’s) which was extremely slippery and the cars were skidding on that portion of the track.

Renault’s Robert Kubica came in fourth with a timing of 1:41.715 while last year’s pole clincher Vettel who clocked 1:39.489 then, was now sixth with a time of 1:42.216, .034s behind Ferrari’s Massa. Massa who suffered a minor traffic accident yesterday evening in Valencia recovered to take part in the practice session.

The second Red Bull of Mark Webber was in seventh position with a time of 1:42.275 ahead of seven time world champion Michael Schumacher in 1:42.312. The local lad Fernando Alonso was in ninth with 1:42.421 while Williams’s Barrichello managed a place in top 10 at tenth with a timing of 1:42.463.

Barrichello’s team mate Nico Hulkenberg was eleventh with just .043 seconds adrift of him and he was followed by Renault’s Russian driver Vitaly Petrov at 1:42.962. The Torro Rosso of Buemi was 13th with .07 seconds ahead of Italian Vinantonio Liuzzi of Force India who lapped at 1:43.380.BMW Sauber’s Pedro De La Rosa came in between the two Force India cars on 15th position with timing of 1:43.397 and Paul di Resta who was substituting again at Force India for Adrian Sutil was on 1:43.437, Kamui Kobayashi was 17th with 1:43.729 for BMW Sauber.

Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari was 18th clocking 1:44.183s ahead of Heikki Kovalainen who got Lotus’s 500th race off to a great start by getting closer than the team ever has to a midfield outfit with a lap in 1m 44.491s. Timo Glock followed up on 1m 45.653s for Virgin, then came Bruno Senna on 1m 47.123s for HRT, Jarno Trulli shaking down his new Lotus T127 chassis with 1m 47.285s, Christian Klien who was deputising for HRT’s Karun Chandhok for this session only on 1m 47.343s, and Lucas di Grassi in the second Virgin on 1m 47.356s.

Valencia, with its close walls, always has the potential for accidents but the first session was largely incident free but for a short red flag interruption to recover a wing mirror lost from Bruno Senna’s HRT after Buemi had run over the debris. The Valencia street circuit is notoriously dusty and dirty on the first day and so the early times may be even less representative than normal, but Mercedes is hopeful of a step forward from its Valencia package, which includes an exhaust system which will enhance the performance of the diffuser.