Hockenheim, 18th July 2008

Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen ended the first day of free practice in second and third place on the afternoon time sheet, having been third and fifth respectively in the morning. British Grand Prix winner Lewis Hamilton was fastest in his McLaren-Mercedes by the large margin of 0.697 seconds. As the times of the top drivers were very similar up until the tail end of the afternoon, it backs up the obvious fact that without knowing what fuel loads other drivers are running, one can only draw a general view of the results rather than claiming one driver or team is clearly quicker than the rest.

The Englishman's team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen was fourth behind the two Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro drivers. Mark Webber was fifth for Red Bull-Renault, with Fernando Alonso completing the top six for Renault.
Usually, this race is characterised by very hot and humid conditions, but so far this weekend, sunshine has been only an occasional visitor to the Hockenheimring and indeed, this morning's session started on a wet track. This combined with the fact it has rained in this area earlier in the week and some strong winds in the afternoon meant that track conditions were different to those at last week's test here and generally grip levels were lower. Nevertheless, after a total of 110 laps completed today by the two F2008 cars; 53 for the Brazilian and 57 for the Finn, the team had plenty of time to fully assess track conditions and act accordingly.


While the weather forecast for Sunday is currently predicting dry warm conditions, tomorrow's is far more uncertain, with a good chance of showers around qualifying time in the afternoon. The Saturday afternoon shoot-out is always one of the highlights of the weekend as the cars perform at their fastest on the lightest possible fuel loads up until the final Q3 part of proceedings and rain will certainly add something extra: for better or for worse.