Practice 1 Report - Schumacher tops wet Korean first practice

Michael Schumacher (2:02.784) set the fastest lap in a wet first session of free practice for Sunday's Korean GP, round 16 of the 2011 Formula 1 World Championship.

It was a slow start as a number of drivers - Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Jenson Button, Bruno Senna, Vitaly Petrov and Heikki Kovalainen - elected to do installation laps only.

Schumacher topped the session by just sixth hundredths of a second from Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull (2:02.840), which ran a number of exploratory laps at the end of the session.

Vettel survived a scare when he almost tripped over one of the Virgins, which came back onto the racing line amid the spray and forced the world champion to back out of it at the last moment. After the Suzuka race it was Vettel's second successive incident with one of the MaRussia cars.

Paul Di Resta (2:02.912) continues to impress with third fastest time, fractionally quicker than Force India team mate Adrian Sutil (2:03.141) who may have gone quicker at the end had he not been held up by Tonio Liuzzi's HRT.

Sebastian Buemi's Toro Rosso (2:03.182) was fifth quickest, ahead of Kamui Kobayashi's spiritedly driven Sauber (2:03.292), Lewis Hamilton's McLaren (2:03.391) and Nico Rosberg's Mercedes (2:04.311).

Sergio Perez took his Sauber round in 2:04.797, with Mark Webber (2:05.183) competing the top 10 with just five laps in the Red Bull.

Karun Chandhok ended up 11th fastest during his session for Lotus in place of Jarno Trulli, while Red Bull Junior driver Jean-Eric Vergne was 13th quickest in his first practice session for Toro Rosso, in place of Jaime Alguersuari.