Hamilton Fastest in Barcelona First Practice

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the first practice session for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. Hamilton’s team mate, Jenson Button, set the second-fastest time of the 90-minute session, half a second behind Hamilton. Third-fastest was Michael Schumacher, the German posting a time 0.582s slower than the first McLaren. Red Bull was the first team to show speed and for a while it looked like its drivers, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, would come on top. But first Michael Schumacher and Button, and then Hamilton, beat the 1m22.0s of the Red Bulls. Button and Schumacher set their best efforts, 1m21.6s and 1m21.7s just a couple of minutes before Hamilton lapped in 1m21.1. There were no changes at the sharp end in the last half hour as team's switched to work on high fuel loads. Nico Rosberg completed the top six in the second Mercedes, with the Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov sandwiching Fernando Alonso's Ferrari from seventh to ninth, while Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber rounded out the top 10. Paul di Resta set the 13th quickest time in his regular slot as Force India test driver, this week in place of Adrian Sutil for the first session - two places ahead of Vitantonio Liuzzi. Timo Glock got his hands on an evolved version of the Virgin for the first time and finished the session 20th, while team-mate Lucas di Grassi was three tenths further back, 21st, in the old car. Williams was another team to bring just one new car to Barcelona. Rubens Barrichello was 16th quickest despite a problem with the oil system on the new version, a tenth faster than team-mate Nico Hulkenberg who stopped out on track 10 minutes from the end with an engine failure on the old car. Pos Driver Team Time Laps