The inaugural Friday practice session of the Korean Grand Prix (Part 5)
The teams were now getting a hold of the track and things were starting to heat up as the drivers were now going for some faster runs in order to provide their teams with further information.
Vettel crossed the finish line just a few seconds behind Jenson Button but he didn’t improve on his time and was now in second place. Button was more then half a second clear of Vettel after his effort, while the world champion took advantage of his fresh
tyres followed by a slow start. Nico Hulkenberg fell to fourth position but the Williams driver came back onto the track for a fresh run of laps. Button also joined the drivers that were steering off the track into the dust, which was quite immature of him.
The Williams drivers were running around as Barrichello rejoined the Yeongam circuit and continued to get used to it. Jaime Alguersuari improved with a lap time of 1m46.519s to go 13th for Toro Rosso.
Tonio Liuzzi crossed the finish line with a 1m46.707s lap, just a tad slower than his fastest lap and he remained in 14th position.
Michael Schumacher came back out onto the circuit for his third run and he was eighth in the classification currently. Hulkenberg ran extremely quickly on the circuit, and crossed the line to move up to third position with a lap of 1m44.043s. Kubica moved
up the order with a 1m44.374s to take the fifth quickest lap of the session.
Mark Webber came back on the track but Bruno Senna had stopped in the HRT because of a broken left rear suspension and was causing some problems on track. Replays showed that Senna spun at the fast downhill section at Turn 7 and his left rear wheel went
up into the air making the car uncontrollable. The HRT spun wildly across the asphalt area and the Brazilian driver came to rest without making it past the barriers. Senna climbed out of his car as the marshals moved in to retrieve his car and the damage to
the left rear suspension was clearly visible.
The quickest section of the circuit remained under control as the yellow flags were waved and a tractor unit arrived to move the HRT away from the run-off area. Hamilton was still to score a timed lap and the team was busy switching aerodynamic parts at
the rear of his car.
The local marshals were being aided by a team from Australia this weekend, but the recovery of Senna’s car took some time.
The track was finally all clear as Senna's car was placed behind the barrier. Rubens Barrichello posted the fastest first sector time on his latest lap, as his team-mate Hulkenberg scored the timing monitor at its peak in the second sector. Hulkenberg became
the quickest driver with a time of 1m42.678s as Barrichello followed him into second place.
Jarno Trulli was the slowest time scorer and the Lotus team were trying to fix yet another gearbox problem for the Italian. It seems that he was having a bad gearbox day. So it was all a change at the top of the order with the Williams drivers first and
second with Button third and Kobayashi fourth.
Mark Webber moved up into fifth position with a lap of 1m43.414s and he was now ahead of his young teammate Sebastian Vettel while Schumacher was in seventh.Schumacher drove for the line as he was set to improve on this lap and succeeded as he moved up to
fourth with 1m43.149s.
Hulkenberg and Barrichello immediately came back into the pits as the pair of Williams drivers scored pacesetting times. The dust continued to fly at the apex of Turn 18, with a huge amount now spread across the track heading onto the pit straight. Rosberg
was up to fifth which was one place behind Mercedes team-mate Schumacher, after scoring a lap of 1m43.231s.
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