Brazilian GP: Friday Practice Session Report

F1 is in Brazil for its penultimate round of 2010 championship of Brazilian GP on Sao Paolo’s Interlagos Circuit. Interlagos has produced excellent racing in the past and will certainly provide another interesting race this Sunday, as the championship is still up for grab and there are 4 title contenders still in the hunt. May be at the end of this GP, the title contenders could come down to 3 or may be it could move up to 5 or it might remain the same 4, no one have a single clue about it.

Although some people thinks that in this race, the title could be taken by Alonso who is leading the championship with 11 pts ahead of Webber but the way this championship has developed this looks unlikely and the chances are the title could go down to the wire just like 2008. The weather prediction is wet, qualifying is expected but the race day will remain dry.

In Practice Session 1, RedBull dominated the session with Vettel taking top spot and Webber behind him. Hamilton of McLaren and Button takes 3^rd and 4^th respectively. Ferrari’s were off the pace as Massa struggles with under steer while Alonso was using a high mileage engine which was gone at the end of the session.

Kubica and Rosberg take 5^th and 6^th respectively with Barrichello and Schumacher finishing 7^th and 8^th. Sutil was 9^th ahead of Saubers Heidfeld 10^th and Kobayashi 11^th, Hulkenberg 12^th, Alonso 13^th, Massa 14^th, Petrov 15^th, Liuzzi 16^th, Alguersuari 17^th, Buemi 18^th.

The new teams were at the back with Trulli 19^th ahead of Glock 20^th, Heikki 21^st, Di Grassi 22^nd and both HRT’s at the last 2 spots with Klien who replaces Yamamoto on 23^rd and Senna on 24^th. There were 2 notable incidents during the session; first Petrov crashing in the wall and then on the last lap Kobayashi spins and crashed in the wall.

The time sheet for the session is given below.

Second Practice Session, also sees RedBull taking the top spots but Ferrari showed more pace then they had showed in the first session, with Alonso taking 3^rd ahead of Hamilton on 4^th, Massa was 5^th ahead of Kubica on 6^th and Button was down on 7^th. Heidfeld was 8^th with Rosberg on 9^th and Michal on 10^th. Barrichello was 11^th, Kobayashi on 12^th, Hulkenberg 13^th, Sutil 14^th, Petrov 15^th, Liuzzi 16^th, Buemi 17^th and Alguersuari 18^th. Trulli 19^th was again leading the new teams with Heikki 20^th, Di Grassi 21^st, Senna 22^nd, Klien 23^rd and Glock was last on 24^th.

Massa’s session ended early when reports of some clutch problem and returns to pits but it was the final minutes when the most action happened, as first Michal Alguersuari touched turning into turn 1, then Kobayashi survives a scary moment as he lost control behind Heikki’s Lotus and almost hit him and then Alguersuari spuns on his way back to pits. The time sheet for the session is given below:

Images by Getty and Reuters via BBC.