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European GP. FP1 Report. Rubens Barrichello was the perhaps surprising name at the top of the timesheets at the end of first practice for Sunday's European GP in Valencia.  The Brazilian was just shy of two tenths quicker than the McLaren duo of Heikki Kovalainen (running a new front wing) and Lewis Hamilton, who were separated by less than 2 hundredths of a second.  Barrichello's teammate Jenson Button came in fourth, ahead of Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, with Adrian Sutil completing the top 6 in the Force India, meaning 5 of the top 6 were powered by Mercedes.

 

With Valencia being a street circuit, the session began with a very dusty circuit which got cleaner as we went along, thus the early laps by the Toro Ross duo of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari were rather less than representative, although the duo improved throughout the session to end in a very decent 11th and 13th respectably.

 

F1 debutant Romain Grosjean had a fairly steady session with just one slight error, running wide at one unidentifiable corner, ending 8 places and one second shy of his teammate Fernando Alonso in 17th.  Returnee Luca Badoer obviously thought he was still driving for Minardi as he ended up 20th and last, and over a second shy of 19th.  The cars infront of him were Toyotas, with Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli showing worrying signs of repeating their form of the last street race at Monaco, in 18th and 19th respectively.