Singapore, FP1: Alonso leads Mercedes pair in first practice

Fernando Alonso edged Lewis Hamilton to claim the fastest time of the first practice session of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with Nico Rosberg third.

The Ferrari driver’s lap of 1m49.056s was good enough to beat Hamilton by 0.122 seconds, two hundredths of a second further back.

Rosberg topped the times in the early parts of the opening P130 tyre phase but his time was soon beaten by Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel and Alonso. Once the extra set of primes had been handed back, Rosberg once more leapt to the top of the table, this time two seconds than his previous best.

It wasn’t good enough to keep him there, however, and first he was beaten by his Mercedes team-mate, who remained the faster of the two Mercedes for the remainder of the session. Hamilton, too, was demoted when, with 30 minutes remaining in the session, Alonso found an extra reservoir of pace to jump ahead of the Mercedes.

Behind the top three, Vettel took fourth spot, ahead of the team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. The Renault-powered team are expected to mount a challenge around the streets of Singapore thanks to the better downforce of the RB10, but Vettel ended the first session eight tenths of a second adrift of Alonso’s benchmark. Ricciardo was juts over a tenth of a second further back. Vettel also suffered a suspected power unit failure at the end of the session.

The sixth fastest time was recorded by Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne, the Frenchman finishing over 0.2s ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who hit trouble at the end of the session when his front brakes caught fire in pit lane.

Jenson Button finished eight for McLaren ahead of the second Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat and 10th-placed Sergio Perez of Force India.