Practice 1 Report - Hamilton tops first Interlagos session

Austin winner Lewis Hamilton (1:14.131) set the quickest lap in the first session of free practice for the Brazilain GP, just a hundredth of a second quicker than title aspirant Sebastian Vettel (1:14.140).

As well as the usual different Friday programmes, Pirelli has also given teams sample sets of 2013 specification tyres and it was a set of those on which Hamilton set his session best. He was, however, reporting that they were overheating after a couple of hot laps.

Vettel's time was done on the current tyres as Red Bull concentrated on race preparation, but Vettel did also try the new tyres and set a very similar time. Pirelli's Paul Hembery says that the copound is the same but the construction is different, aimed at more mid corner traction, and the tyre themselves weigh a kilo more.

Mark Webber (1:14.198) lapped within five hundredths of his team mate and a couple of hundredths clear of Jenson Button's McLaren (1:14.217). Fernando Alonso's Ferrari was fifth quickest (1:14.392), ahead of team mate Felipe Massa (1:14.716), Romain Grosjean's Lotus (1:14.719), Paul Di Resta's Force India (1:14.738), Pastor Maldonado's Williams (1:15.015) and Nico Hulkenberg's Foce India (1:15.050).

Kimi Raikkonen finished the session down in 16th place, his session interruped by engine problems.