Webber stays on top

Mark Webber remained the pacesetter in Friday afternoon’s practice session, thus completing a perfect first day in Barcelona.

It was much closer than in the opening session and Lewis Hamilton completed the day just 0.039s down on the Australian. The McLaren driver split the Red Bull pair while his teammate Button was fourth fastest. The four of them were covered by seven tenths of a second.

Ferrari’s Alonso was fifth but one second off Webber’s pace. Rosberg, Schumacher, Massa, Kobayashi and Heidfeld completed the top ten.

How the session unfolded :

The teams resumed their preparation as soon as the light went green.

There were many changes at the top of the hierarchy as the drivers got up to speed. Local favorite Fernando Alonso soon took charge at the front with a ‘Red Bull-like’ margin – he was more than a second faster than his teammate Felipe Massa.

Jenson Button split the Ferrari pair and came within three tenths of Alonso. Hamilton took over at the front with less than twenty minutes gone, while the Red Bull drivers focused on their race pace and completed a long run.

Up front, Pastor Maldonado used a set of soft tyres to jump up to P3. Soft tyres were also fitted on Petrov’s Renault and allowed him to top the times. He was the first to break the 1’25 barrier.

Sebastian Vettel came out for a run on the soft tyre shortly before the halfway point and easily set a new benchmark. He lapped in the 1’22 to go 1.5s quicker than Nick Heidfeld. Mark Webber did even better and moved on top of the timesheet.

The Mercedes drivers appeared in the top five thanks to their soft tyres but were still a full second off the Red Bulls’ pace. Jenson Button was third fastest and came within three tenths of Vettel.

Hamilton then took his turn on the soft tyre and set almost the same pace as Webber. He was just 0.039s shy of the Australian’s mark.

In the latter part of the session, Vettel came out for another run on the soft tyre but concentrated on the race and carried a rather heavy fuel load. The rest of the field eventually followed suit and there were no major improvement.