Ferraris Fernando Alonso snatched P1 in the last seconds of a damp first practice at the Circuit de Catalunya.
With most teams bringing upgrades to Spain, and Pirelli supplying an extra set of hard tyres, the thing everyone wanted to see this morning was clear skies over Barcelona. Instead they got clouds and intermittent rain. Although most of this fell before the session started, the track dried only very slowly and the first 70minutes of the session were ran exclusively on the Intermediate tyre. Toro Rossos Jean-Eric Vergne was the first to try slicks, and went into P1 on his second dry lap. This triggered a wholesale changeover and the timesheets were rewritten in the last quarter of an hour, with the fastest lap being swapped by a dozen drivers during this time.
Alonso was quickest with a time of 1:25.252. He was followed by team-mate Felipe Massa, Vergne was P3, Romain Grosjean P4 for Renault, Adrian Sutil P5 for Force India, Lewis Hamilton took P6 in the Mercedes, followed by the hard-charging Williams of Valtteri Bottas. Kimi Rikknen was eighth in the second Lotus, followed by the second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Paul di Resta rounded out the top ten for Force India.
For a wet session there was remarkably little incident. Grosjean had an early slide on his installation lap but that apart most drivers stayed within the lines, albeit with the occasional twitch. Saubers Nico Hlkenberg was the first driver to set a time, with 1:51.644. That dropped steadily as a line dried, and with 20 minutes of the session remaining Lewis Hamilton was fastest with 1:36.159 when Vergne appeared on the experimental hard slicks. Despite a few twitchy moments, he set 1:34.710 on his second lap to move to the top of the leaderboard. He triggered a mass migration to the hard tyresmostly the standard specification orange-banded Pirelliand the last 15 minutes was characterised by fastest sectors from a wide array of drivers. With the track continuing to improve, Alonso finished in P1 largely by virtue of crossing the line after his rivals.
Spanish GP - FP1
1. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m25.252s 20 laps2. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m25.455s + 0.203s 203. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m25.667s + 0.415s 254. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m26.042s + 0.790s 215. Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1m26.212s + 0.960s 246. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m26.374s + 1.122s 197. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Renault 1m26.456s + 1.204s 208. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault 1m26.614s + 1.362s 219. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m26.621s + 1.369s 2110 Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m26.755s + 1.503s 1611 Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m26.940s + 1.688s 2612 Nico Hulkenberg Sauber-Ferrari 1m27.061s + 1.809s 2413 Sergio Perez McLaren-Mercedes 1m27.135s + 1.883s 614 Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari 1m27.250s + 1.998s 2615 Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 1m27.576s + 2.324s 2416 Giedo van der Garde Caterham-Renault 1m28.600s + 3.348s 1917 Jules Bianchi Marussia-Cosworth 1m28.887s + 3.635s 1418 Heikki Kovalainen Caterham-Renault 1m29.177s + 3.925s 1419 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m29.457s + 4.205s 1120 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m29.473s + 4.221s 2121 Rodolfo Gonzalez Marussia-Cosworth 1m30.314s + 5.062s 1222 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes no time 6
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