Webber Tops First Practice in Brazil

One might have laughed when reading that Mark Webber has no intention of helping his teammate in closing the gap on championship leader Jenson Button in Brazil, but the Australian driver sure meant business in the first practice session of the Brazilian Grand Prix, on Friday. Following an incident-full FP in the morning, Webber topped the timing charts with the best time of 1.12.463.

The Red Bull Racing driver therefore stole all the glory from crowd's favorite Rubens Barrichello, who had to settle for the runner-up spot this morning. Nevertheless, the Brawn driver was never in contention for 1st place, as he finished the morning session some 0.411 seconds behind Webber.

Sebastien Vettel completed the podium in FP1, as he was part of a group of 4 drivers – which included 4th placed Heikki Kovalainen – to drop under the one minute and 13 seconds mark in the morning. However, the German driver was more than half of second off the pace of his teammate after the 90-minute meeting.

The session was affected in its first part by a short drizzle, which actually caused the first major incident of the morning. It seems the pressure of retaining his F1 drive has gotten to Renault's rookie driver Sebastien Grosjean, as the Frenchman crashed his R29 into the breaking board and caused the first and only red flag of the day.

Later on, the session was yellow flagged by another incident, namely Sebastien Buemi's damaging the rear side of his STR4 in Turn 8.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton ended the day in 5th place, ahead of Williams' Kazuki Nakajima and championship leader Jenson Button. Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil and Kimi Raikkonen completed the Top 10 of the morning session.

Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Barrichello all spun their cars in the Cotovelo section, mainly because the rain started to appear once again on the Brazilian circuit in the final stages of the session.

Here are the complete results of the FP1 at Interlagos:

1. Mark Webber (Red Bull-Renault)                          1:12.463
2. Rubens Barrichello (Brawn-Mercedes)                 1:12.874
3. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull-Renault)                      1:12.932
4. Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren-Mercedes)                1:12.989
5. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes)                    1:13.048
6. Kazuki Nakajima (Williams-Toyota)                       1:13.067
7. Jenson Button (Brawn-Mercedes)                         1:13.141
8. Nico Rosberg (Williams-Toyota)                             1:13.147
09. Adrian Sutil (Force India-Mercedes)                     1:13.232
10. Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)                                       1:13.321
11. Jarno Trulli (Toyota)                                               1:13.326
12. Nick Heidfeld (BMW-Sauber)                                1:13.464
13. Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso-Ferrari)                  1:13.503
14. Robert Kubica (BMW-Sauber)                               1:13.563
15. Giancarlo Fisichella (Ferrari)                                 1:13.619
16. Fernando Alonso (Renault)                                   1:13.787
17. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India-Mercedes)              1:13.829
18. Kamui Kobayashi (Toyota)                                     1:14.029
19. Jaime Alguersuari (Toro Rosso-Ferrari)                 1:14.040
20. Romain Grosjean (Renault)                                   1:14.173