Felipe Massa’s practice session didn’t pan out as smoothly as he might have been hoping for, the Brazilian decided to miss the first half of the session, but quickly rose to top of the time sheets. The Brazilians session was compromised after Fernando Alonso’s Renault engine exploded on the hanger straight forcing him onto the grass and out of the running for the remainder of the session. Just seconds later, Massa lost the back end of his Ferrari F2008, sending him skidding on the Spaniards oil into the tyre barriers bringing out the red flag for quite some time.

After the stricken Ferrari was cleared from the track, the session resumed with Heikki Kovalainen finding himself a little extra time somewhere on track that bounced him into second place ahead of Hamilton, something that the Britain couldn’t match for the rest of the session.

Lewis Hamilton finished the session in a relatively impressive third place, ahead of reigning world champion Kimi Raikkonen. The BMW Sauber team look to be falling behind compared to the front runners, Robert Kubica- the leading BMW in the first session, ended up in 5th place, eight tenths of a second shy of Massa’s pace setting time.

Renaults Fernando Alonso- who lost half an hour of the session due to an engine failure, managed to salvage 6th place, just a tenth short of Kubica’s best effort, Alonso looks to be on track for a points finish, if everything goes right for Sundays Grand Prix.

We’re getting used to see Sebastian Vettel in the top ten in the STR03, today was no exception with the young German finishing in 7th place ahead of rookie Nelson Piquet Jr. David Coulthard managed to get into the top ten, after announcing his retirement from the sport at the end of the year, possibly making way for Sebastian Vettel to accompany Mark Webber in the other Red Bull.

Times from the first session are shown below

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