Practice 1 Report - Alonso quickest in first Barcelona session

Fernando Alonso (1:24.430) excited his loyal fans with fastest time in the first free practice session for Sunday's Spanish GP at Barcelona.

Ferrari has a new floor and diffuser among the modifications it has brought to the first European round of the season but Alonso played down expectations when quizzed about progress made at the recent Mugello test.

More will be learned about tyre usage in the afternoon session when teams put more emphasis on high fuel race runs, but for the moment Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull (1:24.808), Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber (1:24.912), Jenson Button's McLaren (1:24.996) and an impressive Valtteri Bottas in the Williams (1:25.187), fill the top five positions.

Michael Schumacher's Mercedes (1:25.187), Romain Grosjean's Lotus (1:25.217), Lewis Hamilton's McLaren (1:25.252) and Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus (1:25.288) were all covered by a tenth of a second, with Nico Hulkenberg's Force India (1:25.339) completing a top 10 that was once again separated by less than a second and featured eight different chassis!

Futher down, Jules Bianchi (1:27.475), Alessandro Rossi (1:27.633), and Dani Clos (1:31.618) enjoyed Friday morning sessions for Force India, Caterham and HRT respectively, at the expense of Paul Di Resta, Heikki Kovalainen and Narain Karthikeyan, who return to their cockpits in FP2.