Jenson Button tops opening Abu Dhabi Grand Prix practice

Jenson Button set the fastest time in the first free practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as McLaren dominated for much of the 90 minutes.

The Woking squad was denied a one-two in the final moments though, when Lewis Hamilton was bumped down to third by Red Bull's Mark Webber. World champion Sebastian Vettel was fourth fastest ahead of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa - despite a problematic session for Ferrari.

 

 

 

Adrian Sutil set an impressive seventh fastest time for Force India late on, bumping Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg to eighth. Paul di Resta and Jaime Alguersuari completed the top ten, while Friday testers Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso) and Romain Grosjean (Renault) were 11th and 12th.

Hamilton was out early in the session and set an initial 1m43.899s to bump Renault Friday man and newly-crowned GP2 Series champion Grosjean off the top spot after 20 minutes - the two of them, and Daniel Ricciardo, the first men to set times on the Abu Dhabi layout in 2011.

Hamilton, on his first long run of the weekend, then set about firing in consistent purple sectors for the next 11 laps until he ended up with a 1m41.846s.

Meanwhile, Williams's Rubens Barrichello was forced to park his car at Turn 13 with a serious technical failure. Having a problem this early on, and having completed only three laps, ensured the Brazilian was locked at the bottom of the timesheet.

 

It was thirty-five minutes into the session before things began to heat up as world champion Vettel moved to second in the times, 1.7s behind the leading McLaren, and a tenth faster than Pastor Maldonado, who was one of the first to try out the option tyres.

 

This triggered a busy period in the session as the dusty track cleaned up and several top runners posted early improvements – none as fast as Hamilton – to establish an early order of Hamilton, Vettel, Webber, Alonso, Button and Maldonado.

 

That didn't last long though, as Button found his groove and went just 0.015s slower than the #3 McLaren had done.

 

Then the Red Bulls fired in fast laps instantly pushing Webber and Vettel to the fore, only for Button to respond again with a 1m40.955s. That lap was half a second quicker than the field, and established him at the top of the order.

 

With 55 minutes gone Hamilton emerged from the pits for his second, shorter, run and instantly lowered the mark again to a 1m40.466s before heading straight back to his garage. Around the same time Vettel posted a new improvement to go second fastest, 0.341s back, splitting the McLarens. While Massa, who had just improved to fifth behind Webber, spun his Ferrari dramatically at Turn 1.

Just after the hour mark Massa's team-mate Alonso had a similar problem at Turn 5, as Heikki Kovalainen also spun his Lotus under the Yas Hotel. The Spaniard would go off the road again 10 minutes later, indicating that all was not well down in the Scuderia's set-up department.

The frontrunners began bolting on the development soft tyres with 25 minutes to go and Button was the first to move forward – setting a 1m40.263s lap to move ahead of Hamilton at the top of the times. Webber too, improved, but not enough to get ahead of the two McLarens

The Australian went faster still a couple of laps later, in fact, he set the fastest sector one time of anybody, but still the 1m40.412s he produced was not good enough to move him ahead of Button and Hamilton.

 

There was the usual flurry of activity late-on but Button's time was to stand as only Webber improved significantly. Though this might have been partly due to Vitaly Petrov's late session car failure which left debris on the track and prompted a yellow flag zone in the final sector.