Fernando Alonso reigns in practice for Belgium Grand Prix
Ferrari signalled their intentions for the weekend as Fernando Alonso dominated both practice sessions today at the Belgian Grand Prix in Spa.
The double-world champion took the honours ahead of Lewis Hamilton in first practice and Adrian Sutil in second practice.
Rain was scheduled to make an appearance for the whole race weekend, and it didn’t disappoint in its arrival this morning in practice one. Treacherous conditions awaited the drivers when they came to the track, and it was beginning to look like there would be no action at all.
However, the rain eased off just a bit, and that gave enough time for Alonso to post the quickest time of 2minutes 00.797seconds, ahead of Hamilton (2:01.567s) and Robert Kubica of Renault (2:02.081s). Sebastian Vettel could only manage fourth (2:02.450s), while his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber (2:02.926s) was only seventh.
The rain went away in the second session, and as the clock counted down, the track conditions began to improve. As the drivers went quicker and quicker, the fastest time continued to change, with Felipe Massa, Sutil, Kamui Kobayashi, Jaime Alguersuari, Vitaly Petrov and Jenson Button setting the pace.
For all of their efforts, it would be Alonso once again who maintained the momentum and set the quickest time of 1:49.032s, a tenth ahead of Sutil (1:49.157s) and two-tenths ahead of Hamilton (1:49.248s). Vettel didn’t fare better in this session, posting only the sixth-fastest time (1:49.689s), and Webber did worse, as he had a problem early on and could only salvage 18th (1:51.636s).
The session was interrupted by the red flags, as race control reported that there “may be spectators in a dangerous area.” Race director Charlie Whiting was in the safety car going around the track, and allegedly the cause of the problem was children climbing over the fence.
That didn’t do enough to put off Ferrari, and they threw down the gauntlet to Red Bull at this early stage of the weekend.
Is anyone capable of meeting the challenge?
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