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McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton sandwiched Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel at the top of the times after Friday morning’s hour and a half-long first free practice session at Monza. The reigning world champion lapped in 1m 23.693s, just 0.097s faster than the German’s 1m 23.790s, with the 2008 title winner on 1m 23.967s.

Nobody else breached 1m 24s, but Robert Kubica and Nico Rosberg got closest, for Renault and Mercedes GP, with 1m 24.120s and 1m 24.129s respectively. Behind them came a tight group comprising Red Bull’s Mark Webber on 1m 24.446s, Force India’s Vitantonio Liuzzi on 1m 24.512s, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso on 1m 24.543s, his team mate Felipe Massa on 1m 24.648s, Mercedes GP’s Michael Schumacher on 1m 24.756s, Williams’ Nico Hulkenberg on 1m 24.841s and Force India’s Paul di Resta on 1m 24.923s, the Scot replacing Adrian Sutil for the session.

Liuzzi, Schumacher and Hamilton all missed chicanes on one occasion apiece, but otherwise it was a relatively uneventful session as everybody honed their aero set-ups. McLaren and Williams were both running their F-ducts, but Renault weren’t.

Vitaly Petrov was 13th in the second Renault with 1m 25.292s, and again the times behind him were very close as Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi (1m 25.318s), Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi in the BMW Saubers (1m 25.320s and 1m 25.334s) and Jaime Alguersuari in the second Toro Rosso (1m 25.897s) took 14th to 17th positions.

Timo Glock headed the new teams with 1m 26.772s for Virgin, just ahead of Jarno Trulli in the leading Lotus on 1m 26.898s and team mate Lucas di Grassi on 1m 26.956s.

Heikki Kovalainen was 21st in the other Lotus on 1m 27.374s, then came two Brazilians who did not complete the whole session. Both HRT’s Bruno Senna (1m 28.256s) and Williams’ Rubens Barrichello (1m 28.516s) were stopped by mechanical woes, leaving Sakon Yamamoto 24th on 1m 29.870s for HRT.

To watch an onboard lap of Monza, click here.
To watch Formula1.com's 2009 Italian Grand Prix race edit, click here.