Vettel flies in Chinese opening practice

Sebastian Vettel set a dominant pace through Friday morning practice session.

Fresh from a second consecutive win in Malaysia, the reigning World Champion set the fastest time around the Shanghai circuit. It was once again a Red Bull one-two, although Mark Webber was six tenths of a second slower than his teammate.

Both McLarens of Hamilton and Button were two full second down on Vettel’s pace. They were closely followed by Nick Heidfeld, who did only five laps, and Felipe Massa. Perez, Maldonado, Petrov and Buemi completed the top ten.

Fernando Alonso left it late in the session as he was busy doing some aero testing for Ferrari. He did 15 laps and set the 12th fastest time.

How the session panned out:

Conditions around the circuit were still a bit hazy when the track was opened. As usual, each driver headed out for an installation lap and pitted again.

After ten minutes, all 24 cars had completed their customary installation lap and were back in the pits, waiting for the signal from the engineers to kick off their working program.

The first flying lap came from HRT’s Karthikeyan. The Indian driver was soon joined on the board by his teammate Liuzzi and Williams’ Barrichello. Kobayashi then went top in his Sauber before the McLaren boys moved at the front. Both are testing revised floor and exhaust on their MP4-26 today.

As they completed their first run, Mark Webber was slightly faster than both of them. He quickly lowered his time though and established a new benchmark with a lap of 1’40’’055 – nearly 0.8s quicker than Hamilton.

Vettel soon joined the action and was up in P2 after a few laps. He then took over at the front with a 1’39’’540 to round off his first run of the weekend.

Halfway through the session, the World Champion was leading from teammate Webber, Hamilton, Massa and Perez. Fernando Alonso was yet to set a time, so as Glock and Heidfeld.

Back on track for a second quick run, Lewis Hamilton had a big moment but managed to save it. While he failed to improve on his time, Red Bull’s Vettel had no problem to up the pace and lowered the benchmark with a 1’38’’739… he was then a full second clear of everybody else, including his teammate Webber.

The Australian swiftly reacted and closed within six tenths of the German.

With less than thirty minutes remaining, Nick Heidfeld lost his Lotus Renault as he was coming out of Turn 10. He couldn’t avoid hitting the barriers and ripped off his front wing. His session was over.

Alonso eventually put in some flying laps and moved up the order. He was in 10th place when Pastor Maldonado had a spin at Turn 5 and ended up beached on a kerb.

There were no improvements in the final minutes of the session… which ended under the yellow flags as Liuzzi parked his HRT out of Turn 2.

FP1 classification: