Alonso on top in opening practice

Ferrari and Alonso keep the momentum going, but thy are head-to-head with the Red Bulls of Webber and Vettel.

Friday, July 22, 2011

NURburgring, Germany, July 22, 2011 (AFP) - Two times world champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso topped the times for Ferrari in Friday morning's opening free practice session for this weekend's German Grand Prix.

Alonso, 30 next week, clocked a best time of one minute and 31.894 seconds round the 5.184 kms Nurburgring circuit in the Eifel mountains, outpacing nearest rival Australian Mark Webber of Red Bull by four-tenths of a second.

For Alonso and Ferrari it was confirmation of their continuing renaissance in form and speed after winning the British Grand Prix two weeks ago.

Webber's Red Bull team-mate defending champion and runaway leader in this year's title race German Sebastian Vettel was third fastest ahead of Brazilian Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari.

Britons Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button of McLaren, the 2008 and 2009 champions respectively, were fifth and sixth ahead of Germans Nico Rosberg of Mercedes and Adrian Sutil of Force India.

Seven times champion Michael Schumacher was down in 10th place in the second Mercedes as he performed on home soil, one place behind compatriot Nico Hulkenberg who was running as the Force India test driver.

German Nick Heidfeld was fastest early on in the revised Renault before being outpaced by Rosberg, Hamilton and then Vettel before Ferrari took over to dominate the closing stages of a session run under thick cloud, but no rain.

Indian Karun Chandhok made his debut with Lotus and wound up in 21st place, one behind fellow-Indian Narain Karthikeyan who was running for Hispania again, replacing Italian Antonio Liuzzi in the morning session.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo, brought into the team at Silverstone, was down in 22nd place. Below are the results:

GERMAN GRAND PRIX PRACTICE 1 TIMES (FP1)
POS	No.	DRIVER	TEAM	TIME	GAP	LAPS
1	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:31.894		30
2	2	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	1:32.217	0.323	24
3	1	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	1:32.268	0.374	27
4	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:32.681	0.787	23
5	3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:32.996	1.102	18
6	4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:33.628	1.734	22
7	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:33.787	1.893	33
8	14	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:33.832	1.938	27
9	15	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:33.858	1.964	26
10	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1:33.863	1.969	31
11	10	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1:34.094	2.200	22
12	19	Jaime Alguersuari	STR-Ferrari	1:35.115	3.221	23
13	18	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	1:35.371	3.477	20
14	11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1:35.389	3.495	24
15	9	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1:35.444	3.550	22
16	17	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.371	4.477	22
17	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1:36.392	4.498	29
18	12	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1:36.842	4.948	29
19	16	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.882	4.988	27
20	23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1:38.504	6.610	22
21	21	Karun Chandhok	Lotus-Renault	1:38.765	6.871	19
22	22	Daniel Ricciardo	HRT-Cosworth	1:39.279	7.385	24
23	24	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1:40.109	8.215	23
24	25	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1:40.428	8.534	22