Chinese GP Free Practice 1 - Hamilton on top

After the drama of the FIA International Court of Appeal and the announcement from the McLaren Mercedes team during the build up to the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, these issues were briefly put to one side this morning in sunny Shanghai as practice ahead of Sunday’s 56-lap third round of the championship got underway.

Lewis Hamilton gave McLaren something to smile about for the first time in a long while as he set the pace with a best time of 1:37.334s. Hamilton’s MP4-24 features a revised aero package and rear diffuser as he topped the timesheets for the first time this year, a tenth of a second clear of the field.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello were second and third fastest respectively for Brawn Mercedes with Heikki Kovalainen slotting into fourth position in the second McLaren. Kovalainen was one of many to suffer with sever tyre graining late in the session with dark rings clearly visible on the rear tyres, something that did not affect his team-mate with the revised McLaren.

Mark Webber was fifth fastest in the leading Red Bull Renault from Jarno Trulli in the Toyota. Nico Rosberg has dominated many of the practice sessions so far this year but the Williams Toyota driver confirmed this week that the Grove-based team are now looking to run with a slightly heavier fuel load in the Friday running to prepare for the third and final round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon.
This underlines the confidence Rosberg now has in the FW31 package as the low fuel runs of Q2 are no longer deemed a major issue.

Rosberg was seventh fastest ahead of Timo Glock in the second Toyota while Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Bourdais rounded out the top ten for Renault and Toro Rosso Ferrari.

Ferrari, having scrapped KERS this weekend in the hope of finding greater reliability, saw Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa record the 11th and 15th best times respectively, the latter suffering from excessive graining resulting in a number of off-track moments.

Sebastian Vettel set the 12th best time in the second Red Bull Renault ahead of Sebastien Buemi and Adrian Sutil while BMW Sauber showed little pace with Nick Heidfeld just 16th ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella and team-mate Robert Kubica. Kazuki Nakajima and Nelson Piquet brought up the bottom of the timesheets for Williams and Renault.

With just 1.5 seconds covering the 20 runners this morning, the second practice session gets underway at 08.00 CET, 14.00 local time.