Alonso leads Mercedes duo as practice begins

2014 Canadian Grand Prix first practice

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Fernando Alonso headed the two Mercedes drivers by a slender margin in the first practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix.

The Ferrari headed the times by 16 thousandths of a second ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who led much of the early running. Team mate Nico Rosberg was third-quickest, a tenth of a second off the other Mercedes.

But not for the first time this year the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen ran into technical trouble. A radio message revealed the team had noticed his engine was knocking, and soon afterwards he returned to the pits for a lengthy spell. He later returned to the track and set the ninth-fastest time.

A late improvement by Daniel Ricciardo moved him up to sixth place behind team mate Sebastian Vettel and the Williams of Valtteri Bottas. The two McLarens were separated by less than a tenth of a second ahead of Raikkonen.

Jean-Eric Vergne put his Toro Rosso in the top ten despite also suffering a technical setback during the race.

Monaco points-scorer Jules Bianchi was the first driver to strike one of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve’s notorious walls. He glanced the barrier at turn four, damaging the right-rear of his car, leaving him crawling back to the pits for repairs.

Alexander Rossi made his first appearance in a practice session this year and finished it at the bottom of the times, three-tenths of a second off team mate Marcus Ericsson.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
114Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’17.23821
244Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’17.2540.01625
36Nico RosbergMercedes1’17.3840.14632
41Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’18.1310.89328
577Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes1’18.3611.12320
63Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-Renault1’18.4351.19726
722Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes1’18.4461.20833
820Kevin MagnussenMcLaren-Mercedes1’18.5161.27831
97Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’18.5781.34015
1025Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Renault1’18.6431.40514
1127Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1’18.7331.49530
1211Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’18.9591.72122
1399Adrian SutilSauber-Ferrari1’19.1081.87024
148Romain GrosjeanLotus-Renault1’19.1421.90432
1526Daniil KvyatToro Rosso-Renault1’19.1771.93921
1613Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Renault1’19.3402.10234
1719Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes1’19.5752.3377
1821Esteban GutierrezSauber-Ferrari1’19.8042.56615
1917Jules BianchiMarussia-Ferrari1’20.2002.96215
204Max ChiltonMarussia-Ferrari1’20.8443.60626
219Marcus EricssonCaterham-Renault1’21.4044.16633
2245Alexander RossiCaterham-Renault1’21.7574.51927

Image © Ferrari/Ercole Colombo

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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19 comments on “Alonso leads Mercedes duo as practice begins”

  1. Yes yes its only practice but i cant help but get excited for the race. Hopefully a podium should be in the reach of Alonso.

    1. Fingers crossed!

      1. And toes too.

    2. Don’t get your hopes up too much @aimalkhan, If I read that right, Alonso set his time at the end of the session where Hamilton and Rosberg had done theirs a lot earlier, and the track here certainly gets faster as it gets less “green”.

      1. I know they are not going to beat the Mercedes but a 3rd place could be on the cards.

      2. Alonso’s time was targeted by Ham and Ros. I saw Hamilton do two purples and lose out in the third. Mistake or traffic I don’t remember.

        Not saying Ferrari are the fastest. They could comfortably be the second fastest team based on Alonso’s times.

    3. Alonso’s car were probably with low fuel. Nothing to understand until Satudary 3rd Practice (IMHO), we will see where Ferrari’s are and if they have close the gap with RBR. It seems to me Mercedes is in another league so, impossible to be close to them.

  2. Typical performance from Alonso and Ferrari in Friday. but you know…

  3. It was looking so good for America until Ericsson set that 1:21.4 at the end of the session.

    I have a feeling the nation’s country singers will all write sad ballads asking where people were when Alexander Rossi finished P22 in this practice session.

  4. seeing those cars sliding all over the place is hard on the nerves,
    well done Alonso lets hope your still up there in qualifying,
    i am sure i noticed faster speeds down the straights or at least not far off what Merc where doing this time around.

  5. Nigelstash (@)
    6th June 2014, 16:54

    Would love to see a Alonso split the mercs., but I can’t see it come Sunday

  6. Has ferrari got something special that they nedded as told by hamilton?

  7. I am getting used to this years looks and sound of the cars ! Heck, I’m even used to the looks of that monstrosity called Ferrari, I would have never expected that.

    1. Still can’t look at Toro Rosso without a giggle))

      1. Agreed. Especially when it collides with the back of other cars. It’s…… yeah……

  8. Has anyone noticed the Merc camera mounted on the “roll hoop” area as being extremely large compared to everyone else’s camera? Was there any commentary on this?

    1. @beejis60 If your talking about the very large cameras on either side of the roll hoop then there the teams own thermal cameras, Several teams run them during Friday sessions.

      The T-bar camera on the top of the roll hoop didn’t look any different to normal to me & its in the regulations that every car must carry a camera there & that the housing has to be the same size/shape on every car to ensure nobody gets an aero advantage or disadvantage from running it.

      Having said that on Friday FOM do sometimes place a special 3D in-car housing in the T-bar camera location to get a few laps of footage for promotional purposes.
      That setup is just 2 Gopro cameras placed in there 3D setup as you can see from Monaco where it was put on a few different teams through the 2 Friday sessions-
      https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/merc-hami-mona-2014-8.jpg

      1. No, I’m talking on the side of the roll hoop, my fault:

        http://i.imgur.com/VS85TPU.png

        1. Yeah there the teams own thermal image cameras, They provide a lot more information than the thermal images you see from the FOM units on the TV broadcast. Teams can also set them up to get whatever data they are interested in getting.

          Different teams run different types of camera, Mercedes, Red Bull & Force India run similar housings & I’ve seen Williams use them as well at times. McLaren & Ferrari run smaller units which are built into the dummy camera housings.
          You can see the Ferrari unit on the right side of the car in the image at the top of this article (FOM TV camera is on the left side of the car).

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