Hungary 2008: Friday Morning Practice

Felipe Massa topped the tables in the morning free practice at the Hungaroring earlier today. The Brazilian driver managed a lap time 0.4s faster than his team mate Kimi Raikkonen who was himself 0.4s ahead of McLaren pilot Heikki Kovalainen. The Finnish driver, who has just been announced as Lewis Hamilton’s team mate for 2009, lapped the track 0.5s faster than the Briton and appeared to be very fast in the first part of the circuit, although lost time towards the end.

Fernando Alonso showed that the improvements made to the Renault R28 chassis are working and went into the best of the rest position in fifth. Timo Glock, who was cleared to race after his sizable accident in Germany a fortnight ago, went sixth for Toyota and Robert Kubica could only manage seventh. Team mate Nick Heidfeld went ninth and sandwiched Nelson Piquet Jr. in eighth.

The only driver to have suffered a serious issue was Sebastian Vettel, the German parking his car just four laps into the 90 minute session. Jarno Trulli spun but was able to continue on his lap and return to the pitlane. Honda managed to lap ahead of the Williams but BMW and Red Bull appear off-pace going by the lap times – Red Bull are 1.6s off the leaders pace and BMW are 1.3s shy.

Hungary 2008: Friday Free Practice One