McLaren's Lewis Hamilton headed Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg
in first practice at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Hamilton, searching for his first win of the season in
the seventh race, was 0.118 seconds quicker than Vettel, with Rosberg
only 0.1secs further adrift.
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest, and the second Red Bull of Mark Webber was fifth.
McLaren's Jenson Button was only 10th after reliability problems.
Button had a trying session - he was out late, set his time, and then was called back into the garage when the team noticed some excessive clutch slip.
They took off the gearbox and discovered there an was oil leak, leading to the 2009 world champion completing about half the number of laps of his rivals.
That will not help him as he attempts to get on top of the troubles that have seen him score only two points in the past three races.
The top 11 cars were covered by a second, with Force India's Nico Hulkenberg sixth on super-soft tyres, ahead of the Saubers of Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez, and Michael Schumacher's Mercedes.
The second Force India of Scot Paul di Resta was 11th.
Hamilton, in contrast to his team-mate, had a largely untroubled session, apart from a brief off-track moment at the first corner, and looked impressive throughout, setting the pace whenever he was out on the track.
The fastest times of Hamilton, Rosberg and
Alonso were set on the 'soft' tyre, the harder of the two options in
Montreal, while Vettel leapfrogged from fourth to second when he fitted
the softer 'super-soft' tyre at the end of the session.
Rosberg's pace confirmed the potential that most
expected of the Mercedes at this race, while Ferrari spent the session
comparing a new rear bodywork design with the previous one.
The team have introduced a design similar to McLaren's, where the exhaust is channelled down towards the inside of the rear tyre in an attempt to increase downforce.
Alonso started the session with the older bodywork and team-mate Felipe Massa with the new design, with which the Brazilian went 0.318secs faster than the Spaniard.
Alonso, the world championship leader, then leapt up to third - before being demoted by Vettel - once his car had been fitted with the newer design, and Massa's revered to the older one.
BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson said: "It's an A-B, B-A swap. It's good to do these comparisons sometimes because it's hard to get a definitive answer from the drivers when the time difference is only going to be in the region of 0.1-0.2secs.
"From what I've seen so far, the developments look good - there are also some new front brake ducts on Massa's car that look effective. It will be interesting to see what parts are on which car in the second session."
The session was stopped after 40 minutes following a crash by Caterham's Heikki Kovalainen at the exit of Turn 9.
The Finn said: "I haven't had a shunt for a long time, it was bound to happen one day.
"I was carrying a bit too much speed into that corner. I thought I'd got away with it, but the rear end snapped away and that was it. It was just a small error but it happens sometimes.
"We have got good mechanics. I don't think the chassis was damaged. It's just about replacing the two corners and we go again in the second session."
An incident involving Vettel and Williams driver Bruno Senna is to be investigated by stewards after the session.
Senna was seen to be waving his arm at Vettel as the two cars approached the final chicane, with Senna on the outside, apparently accusing the world champion of holding him up.
There appeared to be a second, less significant, incident later on, when Senna may have held up Vettel in retaliation.
No comments:
Post a Comment