Massa fastest in opening practice

Ferrari's Felipe Massa went fastest in the first practice session of the weekend at the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Brazilian set a best time of 1:34.972s, which was around two tenths of a second quicker than the fastest effort of McLaren's Fernando Alonso.

Third was Lewis Hamilton, who came within half a second of his team-mate in the other McLaren, whilst Kimi Raikkonen was tucked in behind in the other Ferrari.

Nico Rosberg was leader of the chasing pack in fifth for Williams with Red Bull's Mark Webber, Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Kazuki Nakajima in the other Williams making up the top eight respectively. Nakajima recovered well from a spin in the last corner mid-way through the session to make an impressive mark on the timesheets. The Friday test driver failed to get his car going again after the spin and brought out the only yellow flag of the session.

The other third driver running was BMW's Sebastian Vettel who was twelfth fastest, whilst regular race driver Robert Kubica was two places ahead in tenth. Unable to show any signs of pace were Renault and Honda, whose drivers were 14th and 15th and 19th and 20th respectively.

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