19 Oct 2007
Practice One - Raikkonen steals Massa’s thunder
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Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa ultimately headed the times after Friday morning’s wet first practice session for the Brazilian Grand Prix, but Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher and Williams’ Nico Rosberg also had their moments in the spotlight.
On a wet and greasy track the two Germans set the pace for much of the session, before the red cars ventured out in the final 20 minutes.
Massa set a string of fastest laps, culminating in 1m 20.062s, but right at the very end, with the local hero in the pits, Raikkonen slipped in a 1m 19.580s to ace him by 0.482s.
These were pretty impressive times, given that Massa’s 2006 pole on a dry track was 1m 10.680s, and Michael Schumacher’s fastest lap of 1m 12.162s, and suggest that the new track surface here is quite grippy.
At the end Heikki Kovalainen thrust his Renault up into third place with 1m 20.829s, but though he had by then stopped running Rosberg was fourth on 1m 21.064s having earlier won his personal battle with Schumacher. The latter’s final best was a sixth fastest 1m 21.243s. Interloping in fifth right at the end was McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who did only 10 laps for a best time of 1m 21.121s on his first real acquaintance of Interlagos. Fernando Alonso in the other MP4-22 did just installation laps and was not credited with a time. Neither were the BMW Sauber drivers, nor Giancarlo Fisichella in the Renault.
Sebastian Vettel took his Toro Rosso round in 1m 21.598s for seventh before spinning in Turn 10 after the flag. Then came Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Toyota’s Jarno Trulli sharing 1m 22.104s for eighth and ninth, and Tonio Liuzzi in the second Toro Rosso rounding out the top 10 on 1m 22.250s.
The Hondas of Rubes Barrichello and Jenson Button had been quick initially, but ended up in 11th and 12th places with laps of 1m 22.434s and 1m 22.477s respectively, then came Red Bull’s David Coulthard (1m 22.667s), Super Aguri’s Takuma Sato (1m 22.929s), Spyker’s Adrian Sutil (1m 23.248s), rookie Kazuki Nakajima in the second Williams (1m 23.261s), Super Aguri’s Anthony Davidson (1m 23.551s) and Sakon Yamamoto (1m 24.366s) in the second Spyker.
Besides Vettel, both Spyker drivers had spins, in Turns One (Sutil) and Four (Yamamoto), as did Schumacher and Trulli in the Toyotas, in Turns Nine and 10.
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