Practice 1 Report - Massa provides subshine at overcast Interlagos

Felipe Massa gave the Brazilian locals something to chatter about on Friday morning in Interlagos as he set the fastest time of the first session for the final Grand Prix of the season. The bad news for Felipe was that his title rival Lewis Hamilton was second fastest and has a sufficient points advantage to be able to simply keep Felipe in his sights on Sunday.

Kimi Raikkonen all but matched Hamilton's time but in order to do so he had a spin, the only man to have any adventures on Friday morning. Lewis received no real support from Heikki Kovalainen, who was fifth fastest, half a second off the pace of the fastest cars. He was beaten by the BMW Sauber of Robert Kubica, who is keen to finish third in the Drivers' title.

Fernando Alonso was sixth fastest but the Renault was seven-tenths of a second off the pace, although with Mark Webber seventh and Nelson Piquet eighth, the Renault-engined cars seemed quite strong.

Nick Heidfeld was ninth in his BMW Sauber and then came the Toyota-engined cars of Timo Glock, Jarno Trulli and Nico Rosberg. Kazuki Nakajima could not keep up and was two-tenths behind his team-mate and thus was 16th, behind Sebastien Bourdais and the Hondas of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button.

Sebastian Vettel was 17th ahead of the soon-to-retire David Coulthard and the two Force Indias with Adrian Sutil outpacing Giancarlo Fisichella as usual. The entire field was covered by 2.5secs which is a bigger margin than we have come to expect in recent months.