Practice One - Ferrari set the opening pace 07 Sep 2007
Ferrari led the way at Monza on Friday morning as practice opened for the Italian Grand Prix, with Kimi Raikkonen taking the fastest time with 1m 22.446s just ahead of team mate Felipe Massa on 1m 22.590s.
However, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were right behind the red cars with their McLarens. Both had spins, Hamilton in Turn One, Alonso in Turn Five, before returning respective times of 1m 22.618s and 1m 22.840s.
Thus far, it was Nico Rosberg in the Williams who got closest to the top four, with 1m 23.472s, while Jenson Button have Honda a ray of hope with sixth fastest lap of 1m 23.668s. That headed Giancarlo Fisichella’s 1m 23.671s for Renault, the BMW Saubers of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld (1m 23.703s and 1m 23.886s apiece) and Jarno Trulli’s Toyota (1m 23.965s). Heidfeld’s best lap, a 1m 23.748s, was disallowed after he strayed too far off the apex of Turn Five, but it didn’t make any difference to his placing.
Heikki Kovalainen led the next batch with 1m 24.076s for Renault, comfortably ahead of Honda’s Rubens Barrichello (1m 24.564s), Super Aguri’s Takuma Sato (1m 24.587s), Red Bull’s Mark Webber (1m 24.595s), Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher (1m 24.660s), Williams’ Alex Wurz (1m 24.689s), Anthony Davidson (1m 24.694s) in the second Super Aguri and David Coulthard (1m 24.810s) in the remaining Red Bull. Interestingly, many of the people who normally complain that their cars lack downforce were in their usual positions, even though everyone is running the lowest downforce settings here.
The revised B-specification configuration car has clearly helped Spyker, with Adrian Sutil running 19th on 1m 25.130s to head Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel (1m 25.439s), Spyker team mate Sakon Yamamoto (1m 25.448s) and Tonio Liuzzi (1m 25.762s) in the second Toro Rosso.
Besides the McLaren drivers spinning, the only other incidents involved Yamamoto, Rosberg and Sutil, all of whom had minor off-track moments.
