Jerez: Vettel holds off a late-charging Hamilton

Sebastian Vettel emerged the victor on the opening day of testing at Jerez where once again the drivers had to contend with rain and red flags.

The session started on a wet track with two red flags in the opening hour alone. Lewis Hamilton brought out the first when his MP4-25 stopped out on track while minutes after the restart Paul di Resta spun his Force India, blocking the track.

Once under, there was a three hour stint were only light drizzle fell on occasions and no red flags were seen. This allowed the drivers to get down to some serious running before Rubens Barrichello brought the session to a temporary halt when his Williams came to a halt.

Shortly after the session resumed, Hamilton launched his attack on the timesheets. The McLaren driver took control putting his car into the 1:24s despite having been confined to McLaren's garage for almost two hours while his team worked on his car.

Felipe Massa then jumped the McLaren driver, putting his F10 into the P1 slot with a 1:23s. However, not even 20 minutes later, he brought out the day's fourth red flag.

The Brazilian came to a stand still out on track and there was a desperate rush to ensure that the rear of his F10 was overed before the car was towed back to the pits.

"Another usual problem for Felipe, who stopped in the track," Ferrari said of the incident.

Massa spent almost three hours in the Ferrari garage while his mechanics fixed the problem, returning to the track later sans the black bag covering the rear.

And while the Ferrari driver was in the pits the track dried out, allowing Vettel to storm into the lead with a 1:22.593.

With more rain following, the Red Bull racer held onto the position and was still in P1 when Barrichello brought out the final red flag of the day when he stopped out on the back straight.

There was a mad dash in the final 12 minutes, however, none of the drivers were able to overhaul Vettel and he finished P1, 0.424s ahead of Hamilton

Massa was third for Ferrari, finishing a tenth up on fourth-placed Buemi while de la Rosa was a further 0.045s adrift.

Michael Schumacher was next in line, taking sixth place ahead of regular Force India driver Adrian Sutil and the team's tester di Resta. Sutil, though, only spent less than two hours on the track having taken over from di Resta late in the afternoon.

Vitaly Petrov and Barrichello completed the top ten.

Meanwhile, Lotus were in action, pitting their T27 up against their rivals' cars for the first time. And it was a rather admirable performance.

Although the team called it quits an hour before the close of play, Fauriz Fauzy had already completed 76 laps, the fourth highest work rate of any driver at that time.

What made it ever more impressive is that the Malaysian driver spent the day without power steering.

"Without power steering Fauzy has done an awesome job," said team owner Tony Fernandes while tech boss Mike Gascoyne told Autosport that the lack of power steering was because of "a supplier issue."

Fernandes, though, was delighted with his team's performance: "Great day well done Fairuz. Great day for Lotus. Great day to see a British brand back in action. Great day for Malaysia."

So it was a great day for Lotus, although not even a good one for fellow newcomers Virgin.

Timo Glock amassed just 10 laps with a best time of 1:32.417 . That was 9.824s behind the P1 time and more than half a second slower than Fauzy's best.

• Unofficial Times
• 1. S. Vettel Red Bull Racing RB6 1:22.593 99 laps
• 2. L. Hamilton McLaren MP4-25 1:23.017 +0.424 72 laps
• 3. F. Massa Ferrari F10 1:23.204 +0.611 72 laps
• 4. S. Buemi Toro Rosso STR5 1:23.322 +0.729 79 laps
• 5. P. de la Rosa Sauber C29 1:23.367 +0.774 76 laps
• 6. M. Schumacher Mercedes GP W01 1:23.803 +1.210 111 laps
• 7. A. Sutil Force India VJM-03 1:24.272 +1.679 28 laps
• 8. P. di Resta Force India VJM-03 1:25.088 +2.495 74 laps
• 9. V. Petrov Renault R30 1:26.237 +3.644 55 laps
• 10. R. Barrichello Williams FW32 1:27.320 +4.727 109 laps
• 11. F. Fauzy Lotus F1 T127 1:31.848 +9.255 76 laps
• 12. T. Glock Virgin Racing VR-01 1:32.417 +9.824 10 laps

Source: Jerez: Vettel holds off a late-charging Hamilton - Planet-F1 News from planet-f1.com