Free Practice 1 – Williams succeeds in its big leap into the unknown

Under a beautiful blue sky, dotted with a few clouds, the kickoff for this 2009 season was launched. At lunchtime in Melbourne, the drivers completed the first free practice session of this Australian weekend.

Without any benchmarks regarding the performance of the cars, it is the Williams FW31s that achieve the best times with Nico Rosberg ahead of Kazuki Nakajima. Kimi Räikkönen for Ferrari is third while the Brawn GPs are in the top 6.

The young German, with a time of 1:26.687, has the luxury of beating last year’s pole position by Lewis Hamilton by a tenth. But unlike 2008, the cars have completely changed in appearance following several regulation changes, considered unprecedented in F1.

To make things even better for the Grove team, Kazuki Nakajima moves up to second place thanks to a very good lap in the final seconds of the session.

Moreover, both Williams drivers were equipped with the hardest tires available for this Grand Prix weekend (Mediums).

Kimi Räikkönen is therefore third. The 2007 world champion dominated this session for almost 90 minutes. His main competition was, as expected, the Brawn GP team with its two drivers, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, but this was just before the arrival at the top of the Williams team.

While private testing is prohibited during the season, the F1 grid should make the most of the three practice sessions during a race weekend. Against all odds, this first 2009 session took 30 minutes to really start, except for the traditional installation laps by the drivers. Barrichello and Alonso stood out by being a bit more elusive. Furthermore, it was the young Swiss driver, Sebastien Buemi, who set the first timed lap of the season.

Maybe one aspect of these new regulations, which insist that a driver must not use more than eight engines for the 17 race weekends, changes the situation. The teams prefer to play it safe even in this first race of the season.

Räikkönen was the undisputed leader of this session, consistently lowering his time to 1:28.458 with only half an hour remaining.

Surprisingly, the Finn was overtaken by one of his compatriots, Heikki Kovalainen, who took first place after 50 minutes of testing with a lap time of 1.27.743. The latter had the opportunity to implement the latest updates to his MP4-24 just a week ago during the last private testing session in Jerez (Spain).

Kovalainen was almost immediately replaced in the leader’s seat by Barrichello, but this was before Räikkönen’s strong comeback on soft tires. Being the only one displaying tires with green grooves on the sides (symbolizing the softest tires of the weekend), he put in an incredible series of laps until reaching 1:26.750.

Then, after hovering around sixth place for most of the session, Rosberg also completed an extraordinary lap.

In the end and after the top three, Barrichello is in fourth position even after some minor off-track excursions. Kovalainen finishes fifth ahead of the other Brawn GP driver, Button.

Felipe Massa takes seventh place after missing a braking at turn 14. Timo Glock for Toyota, Adrian Sutil for Force India, and Fernando Alonso for Renault complete the top ten. The Spaniard’s R29 apparently lacked downforce.

Lewis Hamilton is only in 16th place, behind Nick Heidfeld (BMW), Jarno Trulli (Toyota), Robert Kubica (BMW), Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India), and Sebastian Buemi (Toro Rosso).

Other incidents marked this session, including excursions into the grass at turn 1 for Nelson Piquet (18th) resulting in a spin, while Sebastian Vettel stopped on the side of the track due to a hydraulic problem with his car. He is in last place with only four laps completed.

Finally, Sébastien Bourdais (19th) and his teammate will undoubtedly suffer from the lack of testing with the STR4 during the offseason in the coming weeks.

Results Free Practice 1 – Australian GP – Friday, March 27, 2009: