Shanghai, 17th October

The two Friday sessions at all Grands Prix are very much viewed as a test session, after which the teams are allowed to change engines and gearboxes prior to Saturday morning, when they must revert to those units verified by the FIA scrutineers. Therefore there is no need to think about "taking care" of these components and with this in mind, the two Prancing Horse cars were given free rein to complete high mileages, with a total of more than two race distances covered by the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro drivers today. The trend of the day was that our closest championship rivals might have got out of the starting gates slightly quicker than us at the start of practice, but then the situation became more balanced, even if this is not the story told by the time sheets. Series leader Lewis Hamilton ended the day fastest for McLaren-Mercedes, the only driver to go under the 1m 36 second barrier at the challenging and spectacular Shanghai International Circuit.

Second and third places went to the newly revived Renault team, buoyed by victories for Fernando Alonso in the last two races in Singapore and in Fuji just a few days ago. The Spaniard was second, with Nelson Piquet third. The Toyota of Jarno Trulli was fourth with Mark Webber fifth for Red Bull. Felipe was sixth fastest in the afternoon, commenting that they were working in the right direction and the car had improved considerably over the day. The Ferrari engine of Sebastien Bourdais' car helped the Toro Rosso man to seventh spot ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in eighth. Our Finn celebrates his twenty ninth birthday today and evidently, the Chinese crowd is quite knowledgeable as there were some crowd banners acknowledging the fact.