Spanish GP: Button tops Practice 1

(GMM) Championship leader Jenson Button topped the practice time sheet as the first Friday session for 2009 on European soil took place in Spain.

The Briton's Brawn was apparently fuelled light for his best lap of the Circuit de Catalunya, as his teammate Rubens Barrichello trailed by a full second.

The two BMW drivers, whose cars are visibly heavily revised for the Spanish grand prix, were third and fourth, behind Toyota's Jarno Trulli.

The Italian's TF109 featured a new 'shark fin' engine cover, whose tip reaches as far back as to actually touch the rear wing.

Trulli's teammate Timo Glock had a run through the gravel at turn 4, as did Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel. Nico Rosberg, sixth fastest, spun at turn 13.

Felipe Massa, ninth, proved the quickest of the updated Ferraris, even after spending some of the session stuck in the garage with a minor problem.

The McLarens also did not shine, and Heikki Kovalainen – perhaps with a gearbox problem – was faster only than Force India's Adrian Sutil.

Local hero Fernando Alonso was just seventeenth and the highest placed Red Bull was Australia's Mark Webber.

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