Button, Hamilton dominate first practice session of 2012 Australian Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
The McLarens dominated the first practice session of the season as Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton topped the charts.
It was a rainy day and drives started with caution as rain poured for about an hour, an oily patch at turn four made things a bit interesting as well. The patch was left during a support session, Sauber driver Kamui Kobayashi was the first one to try slick
tyres and set the new fastest time, others followed suit.
The day started with Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg taking top spots with their new DRS-activated F-duct but as the day went on Button and Hamilton displaced the Germans. Fernando Alonso in the unpredictable Ferrari finished fourth.
Defending champion Sebastian Vettel surprisingly did not feature in the top ten, but it was evident that he was being cautious and did not want to reveal too much. Vettel finished 11th while his teammate, the local boy Mark Webber finished 5th.
Daniel Ricciardo showed good promise in the pre-season testing and on Friday did well to finish 7th in his Toro Rosso. Kimi Raikkonen only completed 10 laps as he had issues with his steering wheel. He was still able to set the 9th fastest time of the day.
Debutant Romain Grosjean the other driver in the Lotus finished 16th so far.
Felipe Massa already under some pressure to perform in the season, was the first one to taste the gravel as he lost control of his Ferrari under braking at turn nine. It was purely a driver error as the Brazilian touched the grass on turn-in and spun 180
degrees. The incident ended Massa’s run 10 minutes prior to the end of the session.
HRT suffered an engine problem due to which Narain Karthikeyan had to stop the car on the track. The engine problem caused them to complete a limited number of laps. Pedro De la Rosa did not get any track time as his car was still under construction.
The second practice session is still going to start at 17.30 local time, it may give a little more insight to how teams stack up to each other.
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