Alonso fastest as Vettel crashes again

Fernando Alonso has emerged fastest from an incident-filled opening day of running ahead of Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver used a set of Pirelli’s super soft tyres to lap the Montreal venue in 1:15.11s to end the day 0.37s clear of Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel.

For the second time in four races the World Championship leader found himself in the wall during opening practice – with Vettel making heavy contact with Circuit Gilles Villeneuve’s famed ‘Champion’s Wall’ one hour into the 90 minute session.

Vettel was immediately on the pace upon his return to the track in Practice 2, while Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi, Virgin Racing’s Jerome D’Ambrosio and Force India’s Adrian Sutil all brought out the red flags with crashes during the afternoon.

The second session also saw Sauber test driver Pedro de la Rosa take over from Sergio Perez, with the Mexican rookie having felt unwell in Practice 1 following his heavy crash in qualifying at Monaco two weeks ago.

Mark Webber had a quiet day to be 12th and 7th fastest in Practice 1 and 2 respectively, while Australian Toro Rosso test driver Daniel Ricciardo was 15th quickest in the morning.

See below for the Practice 2 result

Pos	Driver	Team	Time		Laps
1	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m15.107s		34
2	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1m15.476s	0.369	29
3	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1m15.601s	0.494	33
4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1m15.977s	0.87	26
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1m15.989s	0.882	25
6	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1m16.089s	0.982	34
7	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1m16.102s	0.995	28
8	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1m16.324s	1.217	32
9	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1m16.422s	1.315	32
10	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1m16.687s	1.58	28
11	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1m16.905s	1.798	16
12	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1m16.941s	1.834	39
13	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m17.051s	1.944	32
14	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m17.684s	2.577	34
15	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1m17.757s	2.65	20
16	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	1m18.470s	3.363	33
17	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1m18.482s	3.375	38
18	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber-Ferrari	1m18.536s	3.429	14
19	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m18.601s	3.494	38
20	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1m19.209s	4.102	28
21	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1m19.810s	4.703	25
22	Tonio Liuzzi	HRT-Cosworth	1m20.284s	5.177	31
23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1m20.311s	5.204	38
24	Jerome D’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1m20.922s	5.815	26

See below for the Practice 1 result

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m15.591s
2	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m16.139s	0.548
3	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1m16.549s	0.958
4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1m16.658s	1.067
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1m16.676s	1.085
6	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1m16.842s	1.251
7	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1m16.990s	1.399
8	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1m17.294s	1.703
9	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1m17.445s	1.854
10	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1m17.549s	1.958
11	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1m17.662s	2.071
12	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1m17.820s	2.229
13	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m18.458s	2.867
14	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1m18.506s	2.915
15	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m18.648s	3.057
16	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1m18.852s	3.261
17	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1m18.932s	3.341
18	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	1m19.274s	3.683
19	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1m19.422s	3.831
20	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1m19.577s	3.986
21	Jerome D’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1m19.838s	4.247
22	Tonio Liuzzi	HRT-Cosworth	1m19.960s	4.369
23	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1m20.520s	4.929
24	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1m20.839s	5.248

Click below to view the Montreal Race Guide