Button P1, Buemi survives huge crash
Date published : 16 Apr 2010 - 05:09:12
Jenson Button set the pace for McLaren in first practice in Shanghai, but the session will be remembered for a terrifying accident from which Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi was fortunate to emerge unscathed.With 15 minutes of the 90 remaining, Buemi was travelling down the back straight at top speed when his front suspension disintegrated as he pressed the brake pedal ripping both front wheels off and leaving him a passenger as his car careered down the road unguided.Mercifully the Toro Rosso's momentum was dissipated and after swiping the guardrail came safely to rest in the gravel, although the wayward front wheels went bounding down the road and one cleared the catchfencing and landed within a spectator enclosure.Buemi was understandably shaken when he returned to the garage a few minutes later, after one of the most violent mechanical failures seen on a Formula 1 car in many a long year.At the time of writing Toro Rosso is unsure what caused the accident and is thoroughly examining the data.Following a red-flag period while the circuit was cleared of shattered carbon fibre debris, the session resumed with six minutes remaining, but no one beat Button's benchmark time of 1m36.677s, set shortly after the halfway mark.Nico Rosberg was just 0.071s adrift in second place in the leading Mercedes, the young German keeping up his usual strong Friday practice form, while the other McLaren of Lewis Hamilton was also within 0.1s in third.Michael Schumacher made good use of the final six minutes of action to vault from seventh to fourth and complete the McLaren/Mercedes quartet.Malaysia winner and form man Sebastian Vettel was fifth for Red Bull ahead of the two Renaults and his team-mate Mark Webber, with Adrian Sutil ninth in the Force India.Meanwhile Ferrari's Chinese Grand Prix weekend got off to an inauspicious start, as Fernando Alonso suffered another very public engine failure and Felipe Massa managed only 10th on the timesheet.Alonso had completed only a handful of installation laps when he stopped on the circuit 54 minutes into the session trailing smoke and with a lick of flame emanating from the F10's right-hand exhaust bank.The Spaniard therefore didn't post a timed lap and will start the afternoon session on the back foot.Two others to experience more minor troubles were Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli.The Virgin's front wing was deranged and the Lotus shed what appeared to be an aerodynamic part, in both cases seemingly as a result of bottoming heavily on a pronounced bump approaching turn one, which appears to be more severe than it was last year.Chinese GP free practice session one times1 BUTTON McLaren 1m36.677s2 ROSBERG Mercedes 1m36.748s3 HAMILTON McLaren 1m36.775s4 SCHUMACHER Mercedes 1m37.509s5 VETTEL Red Bull 1m37.601s6 KUBICA Renault 1m37.716s7 PETROV Renault 1m37.745s8 WEBBER Red Bull 1m37.980s9 SUTIL Force India 1m38.008s10 MASSA Ferrari 1m38.098s11 ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso 1m38.161s12 KOBAYASHI Sauber 1m38.375s13 DE LA ROSA Sauber 1m38.421s14 HULKENBERG Williams 1m38.569s15 DI RESTA Force India 1m38.618s16 BARRICHELLO Williams 1m38.678s17 BUEMI Toro Rosso 1m39.939s18 TRULLI Lotus 1m41.531s19 KOVALAINEN Lotus 1m41.779s20 GLOCK Virgin 1m41.830s21 DI GRASSI Virgin 1m42.181s22 SENNA HRT 1m43.875s23 CHANDHOK HRT 1m43.949s24 ALONSO Ferrari no time
