Chinese GP Practice**Spoilers**

The opening practice session of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend saw the fastest four runners covered by less than two-tenths of a second with Kimi Raikkonen leading the way in his Ferrari. The Finn, still with a mathematical chance of winning the championship, set a best lap of 1:37.024s around the 5.451km Shanghai International circuit.

With Raikkonen at the top of the timesheets, Fernando Alonso was second fastest in his McLaren Mercedes ahead of Felipe Massa and championship leader Lewis Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg took the best-of-the-rest award in this 90-minute session with the fifth fastest time in his Williams Toyota using the softer ‘medium’ compound of Bridgestone Potenza available this weekend. The team opted to run Kazuke Nakajima in the second FW29 with the Gp2 racer setting the ninth fastest time. Alex Wurz sat out the session but is expected to be back in action this afternoon.

Robert Kubica set the fifth fastest time in his BMW Sauber while team-mate Nick Heidfeld missed much of the second half of the session due to a gearbox issue. After stopping on track, the crew worked hard to get the F1.07 repaired and Heidfeld was able to complete a few laps at the end of the session. He was tenth fastest.


Jarno Trulli was seventh fastest in his Toyota, bumped down the order by Rosberg and Kubica late in the session. Team-mate Ralf Schumacher was 12th best just behind the leading Renault of Heikki Kovalainen.

David Coulthard and Mark Webber were 13th and 18th respectively for the Red Bull Renault team with Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello in between for Honda, as well as Takuma Sato and Tonio Liuzzi for Super Aguri and Toro Rosso. Anthony Davidson set the 19th best time in the second SA07 ahead of Vettel and the Spyker Ferrari duo of Sakon Yamamoto and Adrian Sutil.

It was a pretty uneventful 90-minutes of running but as ever, it is Ferrari and McLaren some way ahead of the rest of the field.

 

LoL! talk about not giving up

and yea, SPyker already have a point in the bag, so Mclaren are the last in the pitlane