France 2008: Friday Morning Practice

Felipe Massa has gone fastest around Magny Cours in this morning’s practice session, the Brazilian driver setting a lap time 0.7s faster than Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren. Less than 0.05s behind Hamilton was team mate Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen went fourth in the sister Ferrari. Robert Kubica continued to do a solid job for BMW while Fernando Alonso pleased fans with a sixth place position, only 0.4s down on the McLaren’s. Although his engine went pop just before the scheduled break for lunch.

There were no great surprises during the morning run, although a few drivers ran wide at the tight Adelaide hairpin. Williams don’t appear to be doing so well around Magny Cours, but as this is the first running of the weekend, little can be deduced from Nico Rosberg’s and Kazuki Nakajima’s times at the moment.

Nelson Piquet Jr put his hard work from the test session at Barcelona last week to good use, his Renault climbing up to eleventh on the timing sheet and the gap to his world champion team mate being only 0.663s. The only other notable point from this pre-lunch tour are Honda, who like Williams do not appear to be keyed in just yet. However, they have time to adjust their cars and we’ll see where everybody shakes out after the second session this afternoon.

France Friday Practice One