Montreal Practice 1: Alonso upstages Mercedes duo

Fernando Alonso fastest in FP1

Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso upstaged the mighty Mercedes team by setting the pace in first free practice session of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend on Friday.
Alonso, a winner on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2006 and runner-up to world champion Sebastian Vettel last year, lapped the island based track with a best time of 1:17.238 seconds on an overcast morning on the banks of the St.Lawrence river.
Right behind the Spaniard were the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton, a three-times winner in Canada, and his team mate and championship leader Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton was a mere 0.016 of a second down on the top time, with Rosberg third fastest – 0.146 of a second the gap between the top three, who were also the only ones to dip below into the 77 second zone around the circuit on the Ile Notre Dame.

Lewis Hamilton was second fastest in FP1

Ferrari had a raft of updates to be tested on the troublesome F14T, and early indications are that they may have found a step up in performance although Kimi Raikkonen was down in ninth, 1.3 seconds slower than his Spanish teammate, but the Finn was unable to use the power unit to its full extent at the start of the session and lost out on track time as a result.
Hamilton and Rosberg arrived in Canada downplaying a spat between the team mates that had dominated talk up and down the paddock but on the track their rivalry remained firmly in place.
With six wins from six races Mercedes have ruled the Formula One grid and are expected to continue their domination on a Montreal circuit that plays to the car’s strengths with high-speed straights. The Silver Arrows outifit could well be keeping their powder dry early on in the weekend.
Red Bull continued to improve with Sebastian Vettel fourth on the timesheets ahead of Valtteri Bottas in the Williams and Australian Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull.

Sebastian Vettel ended FP1 fourth fastest

McLaren’s Jenson Button, who claimed victory in a rain-soaked 2011 Canadian Grand Prix, was seventh best followed by team mate Kevin Magnussen who was racing at the venue for the very first time.
Jean Eric Vergne rounded out the top ten in the Toro Rosso, followed by the Force India pair of Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez who were 11th and 12th respectively.
American driver Alexander Rossi was the only reserve driver doing duty in the morning session, he replaced Kamui Kobayashi in the Caterham cockpit, and ended the 90 minutes session slowest of all. (Reuters)

Canadian Grand Prix, Free Practice 1 – Friday, 6 June 2014

Pos	No	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	14	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:17.238		21
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:17.254	0.016	25
3	6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:17.384	0.146	32
4	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:18.131	0.893	28
5	77	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:18.361	1.123	20
6	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:18.435	1.197	26
7	22	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:18.446	1.208	33
8	20	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:18.514	1.276	31
9	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:18.578	1.340	15
10	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Renault	1:18.643	1.405	14
11	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:18.733	1.495	30
12	11	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1:18.959	1.721	22
13	99	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:19.108	1.870	24
14	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:19.142	1.904	32
15	26	Daniil Kvyat	STR-Renault	1:19.177	1.939	21
16	13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	1:19.340	2.102	37
17	19	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:19.575	2.337	7
18	21	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:19.804	2.566	15
19	17	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:20.200	2.962	15
20	4	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	1:20.844	3.606	26
21	9	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	1:21.404	4.166	33
22	45	Alexander Rossi	Caterham-Renault	1:21.757	4.519	27