Raikkonen tops practice standings with Hamilton second
Friday, 14 Mar 2008 13:13
The two McLarens performed well in the first free practice of the year
McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton has begun his second season in formula one in fine style, finishing second in Friday's free practice session in Melbourne.
The Briton completed his day's work ahead of the opening grand prix of the season in Australia behind world champion Kimi Raikkonen in the standings.
In the morning session Hamilton's time of 1m 26.948secs was second behind Raikkonen's Ferrari, with a best time of 1:26.461.
The Finn's team-mate Felipe Massa finished just one-hundredth of a second behind Hamilton in third with 1:26.958, while the second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen was fourth with 1:27.114.
Mark Webber's Red Bull finished a respectable fifth, while Fernando Alonso of the Renault team was sixth.
In the afternoon session, Hamilton improved on his time and finished fastest of all 22 runners with a time of 1:26.559 but was still unable to beat Raikkonen's mark from the morning.
Webber, at his home track, was second with Massa third and Kovalainen fourth. David Coulthard came fifth in the second Red Bull with Raikkonen in sixth.
Afterwards, Hamilton hailed the day as "a good start to the Australian grand prix and the season".
"It's great to be back racing and being here in Melbourne where I started my F1 career only a year ago," he said.
"It's always a special feeling to go out of the garage for the first time in practice at the start of a new season.
"There was some good progress with the car, and we made the best use of the ever-improving track conditions.
"Our main opposition looks strong, but it's still too early to tell exactly where we are in comparison."
McLaren owner Ron Dennis agreed with Hamilton that the conditions improved throughout the day, saying it gave the team a chance to work on technical evaluations ahead of tomorrow's first qualifying session of the season.
"Both Lewis and Heikki made solid starts to the weekend and are pleased with the balance of the car," Dennis explained.
"We spent the first session just familiarising ourselves with the track as it was dirty and continued to get faster and faster.
"In the second session we started work on qualifying setup and tyre evaluation. The strong wind today was an additional challenge for the setup work, but we experienced no problems."