Massa has always done well in Magny-Cours and judging by this morning’s first free practise session this year looks to be no different with the Brazilian dominating the top of the time sheets, beating Hamilton by seven tenths of a second. 

0.1s separated the two McLarens of Hamilton and Kovalainen and the Ferrari of Raikkonen who finished second, third and fourth respectively. 

Hamilton had set the initial benchmark time of 1m16.002s shortly before the halfway stage of the session. His team mate, Kovalainen was 0.053s behind him and 0.71s ahead of Raikkonen. None of the drivers managed to make any improvements on these times throughout the rest of the session. 

Massa was the only driver to make the 1m15s mark with a tremendous time of 1m15.306s which was just under 0.3s off last year’s pole. 

Despite attempts to better the Ferrari’s time, Hamilton could not manage it. He constantly locked up his front-left tyre under heavy braking. He also made mistakes at the 180 hair pin and Chateau d’Eau before getting out of shape at Adelaide which ruined what was looking like a competitive lap. 

Kovalainen was also bent out of shape during the closing stages when he lost the rear of his McLaren through the long 130mph right-hander at Estoril, causing him to shoot across the gravel trap, narrowly missing the tyre barrier. Both he and his car did manage to make it back to the pits unscathed. 

Raikkonen’s session was fairly unassuming. He never ran in to any trouble but still failed to better Massa’s time.

Kubica finished fifth with the BMW’s yet again giving no real indication of what their race pace might be. Heidfeld struggled with his Bridgestone rubber and completed the session in ninth. 

Renault’s home race started rather embarrassingly for them after Alonso’s engine failed. He looked competitive though, up until that point and took sixth place. 

Toyota’s Trulli put in a good performance to finish in seventh and Vettel was extremely impressive, taking his Toro Rosso to eighth place. Glock came in behind Heidfeld to complete the top ten.

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