Nico Rosberg had the edge over his team-mate as practice got underway ahead of the British Grand Prix this weekend. The German, race winner in Austria two weeks ago, finished the session seven-tenths clear of his team-mate car after an hour and a half session, although Lewis found himself repeatedly impeded by other drivers, yellow flags and a red flag about 30 minutes in.
Susie Wolff was driving Valtteri Bottas’ Williams for the Free Practice One, which made her the first woman to drive a Formula One session in 22 years, but her running was short lived as she encountered what appears to have been an oil pressure issue which caused her engine to shut off after a single flying lap. Not too long afterwards, her Williams team-mate, Felipe Massa, lost control of his FW35 coming out of the hangar straight and spun into a high speed collision with the barriers which heavily damaged his car and left him back in the garage with Wolff.
A red flag was brought out to clear his car and, ten minutes later, the green flag was shown and the session got back underway. Daniil Kvyat was the first man out on track and the majority of the other drivers followed him out slowly, all except Pastor Maldonado whose Lotus was undergoing surgery in the garage with an expected engine problem – which could signal a grid penalty for the Venezuelan on Sunday.
The rest of the running was relatively straight-forward for everyone except for Marcus Ericsson who spun out of the maggots-becketts section and beached his Caterham where marshals could not push it back to track. Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez scrapped in the final minutes as the Spaniard tried to pass the Mexican to get a clean lap, but was met with a surprising amount of resistance from the slower Force India. Ricciardo pulled in early with a suspected gearbox problem, while Daniel Juncadella and Robin Frijns had relatively smooth sessions for Force India and Caterham, respectively.
Free Practice One results:
- Nico Rosberg
- Lewis Hamilton
- Fernando Alonso
- Daniel Ricciardo
- Kimi Raikkonen
- Sebastian Vettel
- Jenson Button
- Daniil Kvyat
- Jean-Eric Vergne
- Kevin Magnussen
- Sergio Perez
- Romain Grosjean
- Esteban Gutierrez
- Daniel Juncadella
- Giedo van der Garde
- Jules Bianchi
- Felipe Massa
- Max Chilton
- Marcus Ericsson
- Robin Frijns
- Susie Wolff
- Pastor Maldonado
Image courtesy of Mercedes AMG F1 Team.
Ben Sweeney's F1 Blog 