F1 - Massa heads practice one in Turkey

Massa topped the timesheets at his joker circuit

Felipe Massa underlined his status as the man to beat in Turkey by topping the times in the opening practice session on Friday morning.

The Brazilian has won the past two Turkish Grands Prix and, with Ferrari in its current imperious form, has every chance of making it a hat-trick this weekend.

However, the Maranello team didn’t enjoy a trouble-free start to its preparations, with world champion Kimi Raikkonen suffering a gearbox problem and ending the session at the bottom of the timesheets.

Heikki Kovalainen made a confident return to the cockpit after his huge Spanish GP crash, setting the second fastest time just 0.133s behind Massa.

His McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton was third quickest, a further 0.3s adrift, while Fernando Alonso again showed Renault’s improved form with the fourth best time, just under a second off the ultimate pace.

The session took what seemed like an age to get going, not helped by the organisers having unaccountably doused the racing line with track-cleaning fluid just before it began.

With wet patches on the line at various points between turns three and nine, the teams were even more reluctant than usual to leave their garages.

Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais finally recorded the first timed lap 40 minutes into to the 90-minute session, prompting the rest of the field to follow suit.

Kovalainen was the initial pace-setter, immediately getting down to business and showing no ill effects from his Barcelona accident.

The Finn steadily lowered the benchmark time to the low-1m28s range, but grip was hard to come by in the cool conditions – as several drivers proved with clumsy-looking spins at various points on the track.


Hamilton managed third, behind team mate Kovalainen

Hamilton and Massa both gyrated in the fast left-handed turn three, Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) and Jarno Trulli (Toyota) spun in the double left of turns five and six, Giancarlo Fisichella rotated his Force India at turn seven and team-mate Adrian Sutil also had an off-piste excursion.

Fortunately the Istanbul Park track has copious run-off areas and no one damaged their cars.

Massa moved to the top of the timing charts at the one-hour mark and would remain there for the remainder of the session.

But it took him four flying laps to demote Kovalainen, showing that the Ferrari still takes longer than rival cars to get its tyres up to temperature – which might give the likes of McLaren and BMW a glimmer of hope for qualifying.

Massa continued to push hard as the session went on, running wide across the apron in the ultra-quick turn eight on one lap and ultimately improving his time to 1m27.323s.

Behind Massa, the McLaren pair and Alonso, Jenson Button finished an encouraging fifth fastest in the Honda, which was again sporting its distinctive ‘Dumbo’ nose wings.

Nakajima was a strong sixth for Williams, seven places ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg, with Nick Heidfeld seventh fastest in the lead BMW.

The sister F1.08 of Robert Kubica languished in the garage with an apparent problem in the closing stages of the session – leaving record-breaker Rubens Barrichello (Honda), Nelson Piquet (Renault) and Timo Glock (Toyota) to complete the top 10.

Turkish GP free practice session one times
1. MASSA Ferrari 1m27.323s
2. KOVALAINEN McLaren 1m27.456s
3. HAMILTON McLaren 1m27.752s
4. ALONSO Renault 1m28.284s
5. BUTTON Honda 1m28.919s
6. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m29.002s
7. HEIDFELD BMW 1m29.024s
8. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m29.068s
9. PIQUET Renault 1m29.082s
10. GLOCK Toyota 1m29.103s
11. TRULLI Toyota 1m29.329s
12. KUBICA BMW 1m29.330s
13. ROSBERG Williams 1m29.367s
14. SUTIL Force India 1m29.756s
15. FISICHELLA Force India 1m29.811s
16. WEBBER Red Bull 1m30.088s
17. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m30.340s
18. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso 1m30.388s
19. VETTEL Toro Rosso 1m30.426s
20. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m30.732s


Nakajima was in fine form in the morning

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