Red Bull Duo Tops First Practice in British GP

Red Bull Racing's heavily updated RB5 dominated the first practice session for the British Grand Prix on Friday, as Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber posted the leading quickest times of the morning ahead of championship leader and local favorite Jenson Button.

The Red Bull duo challenged for the top spots of the P1 for the entire morning, with Webber being most of the times some two or three hundreds of a second quicker than Vettel. Brawn GP's Button and Toyota's Jarno Trulli managed to post some quick times of their own in the mid-session, but it was ultimately the RBR drivers who then took control of the action.

Webber decided to go on long-runs strategy for Friday morning and that eventually cost him 1st place overall, as Vettel's quick stint in the final minute of P1 got him the edge over his Aussie teammate, recording a time some 0.282 seconds better than Webber's

Having debuted some new features on their 2009 challengers themselves, the two Brawn GP drivers finished the first practice in 3rd and 4th place (Button and Barrichello, in that order), while followed by Renault's Fernando Alonso.

Felipe Massa, Jarno Trulli, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg followed the leading Top 5 on the time charts, while the two Force India drivers - Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil - scored some impressive 10th and 11th best times of the day.

The first day of action on the Silverstone circuit was not accident-free, as expected, with Renault's Nelsinho Piquet being the first to make a short visit to the runoffs, due to a high-speed spin at Copse. The accident resulted in some slight damage to his car. Toyota's Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli also had some problems keeping their cars on the track at Club and Becketts respectively.

1. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull-Renault)                      1:19.400
2. Mark Webber (Red Bull-Renault)                           1:19.682
3. Jenson Button (Brawn-Mercedes)                         1:20.227
4. Rubens Barrichello (Brawn-Mercedes)                  1:20.242
5. Fernando Alonso (Renault)                                    1:20.458
6. Felipe Massa (Ferrari)                                            1:20.471
7. Jarno Trulli (Toyota)                                                1:20.585
8. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes)                     1:20.650
9. Nico Rosberg (Williams-Toyota)                              1:20.815
10. Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India-Mercedes)         1:20.838
11. Adrian Sutil Force (India-Mercedes)                      1:20.913
12. Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren-Mercedes)                1:21.029
13. Nick Heidfeld (BMW-Sauber)                                 1:21.103
14. Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)                                        1:21.179
15. Sebastien Bourdais (Toro Rosso-Ferrari)               1:21.384
16. Timo Glock (Toyota)                                               1:21.386
17. Kazuki Nakajima (Williams-Toyota)                        1:21.489
18. Nelsinho Piquet (Renault)                                      1:21.525
19. Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso-Ferrari)                   1:21.590
20. Robert Kubica ( BMW-Sauber)                               1:21.801