Prac One: Kimi lives up to pre-season billingFriday 14th March 2008Kimi Raikkonen lived up to his pre-season billing as the favourite to win this year's World title, dominating the timesheets in the first practice session Down Under.
In sweltering heat, which saw the track temperature reach 39'C, the Finn outpaced Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa by almost half a second as he took charge at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne.
New McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen finished in fourth place as long-time rivals Ferrari and McLaren came out as the teams with the early advantage.
Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso completed the top six.
Report: Despite all 22 completing their installation laps at the start of the session only the Toro Rosso and Williams' Kazuki Nakajima had actually posted lap times at the half an hour mark.
The foursome though were soon joined by Toyota's Jarno Trulli, who immediately took to the top of the timesheets with Nelson Piquet Jr taking four place on his first lap while Kimi Raikkonen went P7. Piquet Jr improved to second place before being knocked down by Timo Glock.
It was Raikkonen, though, who was setting the timesheets alight, with purple sector after purple sector, which put him P1 by 0.850s ahead of his team-mate Felipe Massa. Moments later Massa lost out to Trulli only to then take back second place on his next flying lap. Raikkonen continued to lap improving his time to a 1:27.709.
Jenson button went P7 on his first timed lap only to lose out to his team-mate Rubens Barrichello. Both Honda drivers, though, were almost four seconds off the pace on their first runs.
Back at the top Glock overhauled Trulli for third place while Massa edged ahead of Raikkonen. Webber slotted in to fifth place before being displaced by McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. Barrichello improved to seventh place.
Fernando Alonso goes 12th quickest on his first lap, 3.8s off the pace while Lewis Hamilton was 13th fastest. The Brit, though, quickly improved to third place while Alonso took P6 ahead of Kovalainen before the Finn moved up to third place ahead of Hamilton.
Hamilton, though, quickly moved to the top of the timesheets, clocking a 1;27.386 to put him 0.138s ahead of Massa. Fellow Brit David Coulthard took eighth place ahead of Adrian Sutil and Mark Webber. Alonso went up fifth place ahead of the Toyotas of Glock and Trulli.
With 30 minutes left on the clock the ongoings out on track grew quiet with Trulli the only man in the top ten still out lapping.
However, once the Italian went in five of the top six hit the track with only Hamilton opting to stay in his garage for a while longer. Both Massa and Raikkonen improved their times but were unable to leapfrog Hamilton at the top of the timesheets although Massa did get within a tenth of the McLaren driver.
With 20 minutes remaining three drivers, Takuma Sato, Anthony Davidson and Nico Rosberg had yet to set lap times while the session was briefly red-flagged as marshalls moved Piquet Jr's R28, which had come to stop out on track.
Once the track was cleared it took a few minutes before the drivers were back out. Robert Kubica improved to sixth place ahead of the Toyotas while Sato and Davidson went P19 and P20 ahead of Nakajima.
Raikkonen leapt up to the top of the timesheets with a 1:26.823. The Finn continued to lap setting three fastest sector times to improve to a 1:26.461, some 0.487s ahead of Hamilton while Massa was a further 0.010s behind.
A late charge from Webber put him up to fifth place while Sebastian Vettel went P9.
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