Alonso quickest in wet practice as Vettel crashes

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was the fastest in the first free practice session for the Turkish Grand Prix. In a wet session the Spaniard’s best lap of 1m38.670s was set on intermediate tyres. The session was marked by a crash which involved Sebastian Vettel and caused stewards to show the red flag.

Both Mercedes drivers were at the front in this first session as they managed to take second and third places ahead of Renault’s Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov.

In sixth place came Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi who was faster than Felipe Massa and Toro Rosso’s Friday man Daniel Ricciardo. The third driver of the Italian Scuderia was faster than his team-mate Sebastien Buemi and Force India's Nico Hulkenberg, who completed top-ten.

Thanks to rain that fell from the sky in Istanbul this morning, teams were able to learn more about Pirelli's wet weather tyres in competition conditions, and as usual it took some time before anyone made a significant effort on track.

With 40 minutes to go in the session rain started to fall harder. Still, it didn’t stop Alonso to make his best lap of the morning session running on intermediates.

Although Rosberg had warned via radio that aquaplaning was occurring at Turns 2 and 11 several drivers ran wide, especially on Turn 11, including Timo Glock, Sebastien Buemi, Schumacher, Felipe Massa and Sebastian Vettel, who lost the driest period of running but decided to come out to the track.

But his run wouldn’t last for long as he hit the barrier when he ran wide at Turn 8. The heavy punch forced stewards to bring up the red flag for 10 minutes.

At this time the track was very wet and the drivers who still made an attempt to set a quick time discovered that the times were now a couple of seconds slower. Thanks to the wet conditions both rookies Pastor Maldonado and Paul di Resta, as well as Schumacher made a spin. Maldonado had another incident which seemed to damage his car.

As for the McLarens, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton didn’t make any significant running on the morning session, with Hamilton not even setting a time.