Webber shows dominant form in opening practice

Practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix kicked off on Friday morning with track temperatures already approaching the 30°C.

All 24 cars filtered out of the pits once the light turned green, completing an installation lap before rejoining the pitlane. A few drivers completed some extra installation laps before Nico Hulkenberg kicked off the action and posted a time on the board. Fifteen minutes had gone by by then.

Narain Karthikeyan was looking to join the Force India reserve driver on track and was ready to put some mileage under his belt… but his hopes were short-lived. Smoke poured out off his HRT’s rear end as he left his box and he could only make it to turn 4 before his engine blew.

In the meantime, Heidfeld and Maldonado joined Hulkenberg on the board. Nick Heidfeld then had a problem: the German locked up his wheels under braking and his right front brake appeared to stay stuck. He came back in the pits at a slow speed but couldn’t avoid damaging the floor of his Renault.

With 55 minutes left, reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel embarked on his first stint. As he slowly upped his pace, his teammate Mark Webber popped up at the top of the timesheet. The Australian kept on improving and was, at the halfway point, one and a half second clear of everybody else.

Lewis Hamilton reduced this gap shortly afterwards as he moved up to P2. The McLaren driver came within three tenths of a second of Webber… only for the Red Bull driver to further lower his benchmark and go eight tenths clear of his rival.

Thirty minutes to the chequered flag, Webber was still leading the way from Hamilton and Maldonado. Vettel was down in 14th while Ferrari’s Alonso was 19th. Karthikeyan, Massa and Petrov were yet to set a time.

The Russian was on his second flying lap when a failure on the left front of his Renault sent him in the gravel trap. This was not good news for the team who already had to deal with a brake problem on Heidfeld’s car.

Webber made the most of the last ten minutes to further improve and dipped below the 1’38 barrier. He was one and a half second clear of the rest of the field.

As most of the field looked for a final improvement, Jérôme d’Ambrosio had a front suspension failure at high speed and ended up in the gravel trap. The session concluded with yellow flags still waved in T3, thus preventing drivers to improve.

Webber held on to top spot with a more than comfortable margin over McLaren’s Hamilton. Michael Schumacher was third fastest ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Pastor Maldonado. Massa, Heidfeld, Barrichello, Alonso and Rosberg completed the top ten.

Button was 15th fastest while Vettel was down in 17th. The German saw his two final stints hampered by yellow flags and couldn’t improve his lap time.