Practice 1 Report - Alonso leads the way in Melbourne

Fernando Alonso set the fastest lap of the first practice session for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, lapping the track in 1m29.214s, a time that was 1.4secs faster than Felipe Massa's Ferrari. The track was drying at the time and so it is probably too early to read too much into the times. The third fastest time went to Sebastian Vettel's BMW which was just ahead of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren with Jenson Button fifth in the Honda. An imprfessive sixth fastest was Kazuki Nakajima, the Williams F1 test driver, who egded out David Coulthard's Red Bull, Heikki Kovalainen's Renault and Mark Webber in the second Red Bull.

The top 10 was completed by the Honda of Rubens Barrichello, just faster than Takuma Sato's Super Aguri Honda, Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault, Alexander Wurz's Williams and Adrian Sutil in the Spyker.

Nick Heidfeld was an unrepresentative 17th with Kimi Raikkonen 19th.

More worrying was the performance of the two Toyotas: 20th and 22nd for Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli.