Friday practice in Malaysia – Lewis Hamilton takes the day

The practice sessions on Friday were dominanted by the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton as he seeks to put Australia behind him as fast as possible. The other McLaren of Jenson Button, the two Mercedes and the Red Bull of Sebastien Vettel have all shown pace through the sessions.
Practice 1
In first practice Hamilton lead the way with Button and the two Mercedes in close pursuit, the Renault of Kubica was also still showing the pace that he had in Australia. The new teams were much closer to the back of the pack with the Virgins and the Lotus’ mixing it up together and the HRT Cosworth cars just behind them.
It seems that the Williams cars were either practising long runs or are very slow here. With the Ferraris and the Red Bulls down the order they might not have been the only ones.
1. Hamilton [...]

Australia Practice 1 – Robert Kubica takes the top spot for Renault

Robert Kubica has put himself and Renault at the top of the timesheets in the first practice session at the Albert Park circuit in Melborne. Rosberg, Button and Massa take the next three spots with Vettel taking the fifth place all with very similar times.
With the teams all using different fuel loads it’s hard to compare the times at the sharp end but further down the grid the Force India reserve driver Paul di Resta acquitted himself well finishing the session just a third of a second behind Liuzzi in his role as Friday tester for the team in place of Sutil.
The Sauber’s times mask a dreadful session for them where Kobayashi caused two red flag, de la Rosa’s car stopped out on track and the stewards want a word about one of the Kobayashi accidents, not the start to the weekend that they would have wanted given their poor [...]

Practice 1 in Bahrain, Adrian Sutil and Force India top the times

The first practice is now over and we have our first taste of F1 for 2010 and it is Force India with Adrian Sutil that take the top spot with Alonso and Ferrari second. Fourth spot also went to Ferrari to reinforce the general view that their car is fast.

Other stars were Kubica to haul the Renault up to third spot when it hasn’t looked that fast throughout testing. Jenson Button managed to get in front of Hamilton in the first session in their battle, it doesn’t mean that much but every little victory will help. Rosberg also finished ahead of Schumacher who was unhappy with the car setup throughout the session, how many times in the past have we seen Schumacher struggle all weekend to then take the Victory on Sunday though?
Liuzzi finished seventh to show that the Force India does indeed have pace but the Saubers somewhat disappointingly [...]