Turkey: No Turkish Delights in First Practice

By Karl King
August 19 2005

The fastest face in roasting Turkey today was Pedro de la Rosa who beat team-mate Kimi Raikkonen to the fastest spot in free practice. On an unfamiliar track Toyota tester Ricardo Zonta managed to set the fourth fastest lap of the morning as Webber banged in a surprise lap at the end to grab third.

The dusty track proved a challenge for the drivers, as the Toyota aces, who we saw pictures of whizzing around the track on their stickered-up scooters yesterday, took it easy to look after their 105's. Schumacher and Trulli set the twelfth and thirteenth fastest laps respectively, sandwiched between Ferrari 2006-bound Felipe Massa and Nick Heidfeld.

Jap rivals Honda powered their B.A.R drivers Jenson Button and Takuma Sato to set 5th and 9th respectively. Let's hope they get their tyre choice wrong...again!

Less interesting news time allows me to tell you that Toccacelo made his Minardi debut today and finished over a second behind new-regular driver Robert Doornbos.

Enough time for a little laugh to finish off todays news: Seven-times World Champ Michael Schumacher, and Zero-times World Champ Rubens Barrichello both managed to send their Ferrari's off into the kitty-litter. Unfortunately they manged to get them back on track again, but does this show a strain in the team's ability to master a new track.

Don't tell anyone, but secretly, we hope so!

Times from Friday FP1:

1. DE LA ROSA McLaren 1m27.882s

2. RAIKKONEN McLaren 1m28.453s

3. WEBBER Williams 1m28.765s

4. ZONTA Toyota 1m28.810s

5. BUTTON BAR 1m28.968s

6. MONTOYA McLaren 1m29.183s

7. ALONSO Renault 1m29.283s

8. M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1m29.766s

9. SATO BAR 1m30.050s

10. FISICHELLA Renault 1m30.106s