[Jack_Bauer]

No real surprises in the first session of 2008. Ferrari and McLaren were battling it out for the top spots on the timesheets while everyone else was miles off. The fifth fastest driver, home favourite Mark Webber, was over a second adrift of fourth placed Kovalainen.

Fairly disastrous starts for a few drivers. David Coulthard's session ended in a cloud of smoke after his engine appeared to lunch itself halfway through the session. Are Red Bull's reliability woes coming back to haunt them already?! Nelsinho Piquet's debut weekend got off to a dismal start as he brought out the first red flag of the season after spinning his Renault and stalling his engine. Nick Heidfeld also had a disappointing start with his car grinding to halt out on track and having to trudge back to the paddock. Not entirely sure what was wrong with his BMW. Nico Rosberg's Williams also stopped early on with a mystery problem. His teammate Kazuki Nakajima didn't do much running presumably as some sort of precaution. Headaches early on for a lot of teams!

It certainly doesn't seem like the loss of traction control is hurting the times too much, the pace pace was pretty hot straight out of the box. Raikkonen's 1:26.461 would have put him on the front row of the grid in last year's qualifying! The times were roughly 3 seconds faster than the Friday Practice session times from last year. That's the pace of progress I guess!

Friday Practice 1

1. Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:26.461
2. Hamilton, McLaren, 1:26.948
3. Massa, Ferrari, 1:26.958
4. Kovalainen, McLaren, 1:27.114
5. Webber, Red Bull, 1:28.263
6. Alonso, Renault, 1:28.360
7. Kubica, BMW, 1:28.579
8. Glock, Toyota, 1:28.913
9. Vettel, STR, 1:28.957
10. Trulli, Toyota, 1:29.014
11. Button, Honda, 1:29.124
12. Fisichella, Force India, 1:29.230
13. Coulthard. Red Bull, 1:29.301
14. Bourdais, STR, 1:29.363
15. Barrichello, Honda, 1:29.563
16. Heidfeld, BMW. 1:29.561
17. Sutil, Force India, 1:30.155
18. Piquet, Renault, 1:30.357
19. Sato, Super Aguri, 1:31.048
20. Davidson. Super Aguri, 1:31.771
21. Nakajima, Williams, 1:35.053
22. Rosberg, Williams, no time