Fernando Alonso leads Ferrari 1-2 in first Spain GP practice

Home favourite Fernando Alonso set the pace in a rain-afflicted first practice session for the Formula 1 Gran Premio de España 2013 at Barcelona on Friday.

It was only coming into the final quarter of an hour that slicks were viable, and even then there were sufficient slippery patches to limit the relevance of the laps that drivers managed.

But with so many developments to try, teams were less reticent about coming out early than is often the case in wet sessions.The Spanish crowd therefore had a decent amount of track activity to enjoy all morning, and would also have appreciated seeing home hero Alonso on time of the times for much of the session.

Alonso spent a while as the fastest man during the wet running, though he tumbled down the order as conditions improved.

Going into the closing seconds, his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa was the latest to burst to the top of a constantly fluctuating timing screen as everyone got up to speed on slicks.

But Alonso finished the morning with a flourish, setting a 1m25.252s lap to beat his team-mate by 0.203 seconds.

Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne had starred by being the first man to get slicks to work, and he remained consistently up front for the rest of the session, ending up third.

Romain Grosjean had an early spin into the hairpin at the end of the back straight, before finishing the session fourth for Lotus.

Adrian Sutil’s Force India, Lewis Hamilton‘s McLaren and Valtteri Bottas’s Williams were next up in an inevitably shuffled order, with Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg and Paul di Resta completing the top 10.

Jenson Button was the only driver not to attempt a flying lap, though he did six exploratory tours in the updated McLaren.

Red Bull also hung back when the track dried, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber at the foot of the top 20.