Ferrari’s Felipe Massa set the fastest time in Friday’s first practice session for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this morning, but also brought out the red flag for 15 minutes after crashing immediately after establishing the benchmark.
The Brazilian had just lapped in 1m 19.575s when he encountered freshly spilled oil at Stowe corner, courtesy of Fernando Alonso whose Renault had just lost its engine. The Brazilian’s Ferrari snapped sideways and went off backwards, hard, into the tyre wall on the outside. Massa was unhurt, but his F2008 is a mess.
McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen was second fastest just ahead of his British teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Kimi Raikkonen was fourth fastest in the second Ferrari with BMW Sauber’s Polish ace Robert Kubica fifth and Fernando Alonso of Renault sixth.
The hour-and-a-half session began in bright yet cloudy conditions. German Toro Rosso driver Sebastian Vettel was the first man to record a lap time and only four other drivers ventured out in a quiet first half hour.
Two of them, Kazuki Nakajima of Williams and Adrian Sutil of Force India, suffered early ‘moments’ but both managed to correct their respective slides before any damage was done.
As more cars began to take to the track the Toyotas of Italian Jarno Trulli and German Timo Glock moved to the top of the times only to be quickly usurped by Raikkonen.
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