Patronise F1

Advantage McLaren was just about the message from the opening day in Japan, as Lewis Hamilton managed to pip his title rival Felipe Massa in both practice sessions, finishing top of the slower FP1 but losing out in the light fuel frolics of FP2 to the Toyota of Timo Glock and the Renault of Fernando Alonso.

With the drivers confronting a dry Fuji for the first time, there was more action than usual in the first session of the morning. Kimi Raikkonen popped in the early quickest time, despite nearly tripping over Rubens Barrichello in the process. He and Hamilton swapped top spot for much of the first half of the session before Hamilton popped in the decisive quickest time. Felipe Massa improved to second place, some 0.153 seconds behind the McLaren, while Hamilton's team mate Heikki Kovalainen pipped fellow Finn Raikkonen for 3rd place.

Behind the frontrunners, Renault continued to ride the crest of their Singaporean wave by ending the morning in 5th and 6th places, Alonso edging out the unusually impressive Nelson Piquet by the end of the session. Behind the French cars came Sebastian Vettel, Robert Kubica, Sebastien Bourdais and Kazuki Nakajima, the Japanese driver leaping up the standings on his final run to outperform his team mate Nico Rosberg, who toiled around in 12th, one place behind the impressive Adrian Sutil.

Elsewhere, it was a witless start for the Japanese teams, with both Toyotas and Hondas ending in the bottom half-dozen, while Red Bull continued to disappoint and Nick Heidfeld continued to make people scratch their heads and wonder how he wangled another year with BMW, as he recovered from a spin to go an underwhelming 14th.

Into the afternoon practice session, and into a far happier place for Toyota to boot. Not to suggest that there was something disingenuous about Timo Glock's session topper at Toyota's own track, but it was rather out of the blue. Glock set a 1:18.383 early on in the 90 minute session, and that time remained unbeaten for the rest of the afternoon, despite the ludicrously close times being set, with 17th placed David Coulthard ending the day less than a second slower than Glock.

Alonso ended second in what could have been a short fuel run, or alternatively a sign that Renault are taking their Singapore pace and running with it. Either way, he ended ahead of Hamilton, Mass and Raikkonen. Mark Webber ended up 6th to bring some rare cheer to Red Bull, while Nakajima continued to impress in 7th, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Kovalainen, who stunk up the times to end the session down in 9th. Jarno Trulli ensured both home cars were in the top ten with 10th place.

There were trials for the other Japanese manufacturer though, as the Honda pair endured another horror show, Barrichello ending the session in 15th and Jenson Button slowest of all. Still, at least they're not embarrassing themselves at Suzuka. Now that WOULD be bad.