The opening Friday practice for the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix would see Pirelli provide its soft and medium compound for this race. They had also brought some experimental soft tyre in preparation for 2012. With twenty four minutes of the session complete Rubens Barrichello was to pull off to the side of the track at Turn thirteen pushing his car out of the way. Rubens
would confirm that he had an oil pressure problem but it was later confirmed by the team that it was a catastrophic failure of his engine for Rubens. Team-mate Pastor Maldonado had already taken a hit as a result of having to take a ninth engine for the Abu Dhabi race. Rubens had yet to set a time and would not be able to do so as his mechanics started the process of changing engines to be ready for the second Friday session. Prior to his failure Rubens had only complete three laps.

Pastor would be one of the first to try the soft tyre and with thirty minutes of the session complete Pastor would cross the line setting a 1m:45.444 moving into second position behind Hamilton. Hamilton had set a 1m:42.617. Pastor would cause the mechanics at Williams more work after having hit a bollard on his first run and the front wing was cracked. The team would change his front wing so that he could get back out. With nearly an hour of the session run Hamilton would set the quickest time with a 1m:40.466. Vettel was second followed by Button. There would be several spins from drivers with both Ferrari's taking to
the run off areas. Button would move to the top of the times with a 1m:40.263 from Hamilton and now Webber. Pastor was ion his pit and was currently in tenth with a time of 1m:43.255.

Vettel was now fourth from Massa, Rosberg, Alonso, Grosjean, Alguersuari, and Pastor. Webber would improve slightly with a 1m:40.525 but remained third. Grosjean was in the second Lotus Renault replacing Senna. With fifteen minutes remaining the track was quite empty but Pastor would come back out followed by more drivers. Di Resta would move up to tenth, 1m:42.997, using the soft tyres. Alonso would set a 1m:41.377 on his experimental softs, moving up to fifth. Di Resta was now in eighth. Webber improves to be second spliting the two McLarens with a lap of 1m:40.389. Sutil would improve to be seventh , 1m:41.340. With the end of the session it would still be Button fastest from Webber, Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Sutil, Rosberg, Di Resta, and Alguersuari in tenth. Pastor had dropped to fourteenth with his time of 1m:43.255. For Rubens he had the frustration of having his engine fail but reports had his engine close to its end of life anyway. But he still did not get any track time.

Pos  Driver          Team		     Time       Laps
 1.  J Button        McLaren-Mercedes        1m40.263s  21
 2.  M Webber        Red Bull-Renault        1m40.389s  26
 3.  L Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes        1m40.403s  27
 4.  S Vettel        Red Bull-Renault        1m40.755s  27
 5.  F Alonso        Ferrari                 1m40.801s  25
 6.  F Massa         Ferrari                 1m41.260s  17
 7.  A Sutil         Force India-Mercedes    1m41.340s  23
 8.  N Rosberg       Mercedes                1m42.130s  26
 9.  P di Resta      Force India-Mercedes    1m42.151s  28
10.  J Alguersuari   Toro Rosso-Ferrari      1m42.377s  26
11.  J Vergne        Toro Rosso-Ferrari      1m42.633s  26
12.  R Grosjean      Renault                 1m42.685s  29
13.  V Petrov        Renault                 1m43.118s  13
14.  P Maldonado     Williams-Cosworth       1m43.255s  29
15.  M Schumacher    Mercedes                1m43.389s  24
16.  S Perez         Sauber-Ferrari          1m44.412s  28
17.  K Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari          1m44.484s  18
18.  H Kovalainen    Lotus-Renault           1m44.565s  27
19.  J Trulli        Lotus-Renault           1m44.898s  25
20.  T Liuzzi        HRT-Cosworth            1m46.385s  28
21.  D Ricciardo     HRT-Cosworth            1m46.532s  27
22.  T Glock         Virgin-Cosworth         1m48.024s  20
23.  R Wickens       Virgin-Cosworth         1m48.551s  23
24.  R Barrichello   Williams-Cosworth                  3