Alonso tops shortened first session at Austin

F1 Grand Prix, GP United States, Circuit of The Americas

Fernando Alonso went fastest in the first free practice session at Circuit of the Americas near Austin. The session's running was shorted to about 45 minutes following fog and issues with the medical helicopter.

The session was initially delayed 4 times by 10 minutes due to fog not clearing. 40 minutes behind schedule, the session did eventually get underway, but only for 15 minutes, as then Charlie Whiting stopped the running again due to 'further problems with the medical helicopter'. Interestingly, it turned out that there is no medical helicopter present at the circuit, but it wasn't there at the start of the session either.

15 minutes into the session, Button set the fastest of only 5 times on the board. Perez is second, 2 tenths off of his teammate, followed by Hulkenberg, Rossi and Pic. American Rossi is making his debut in FP1 at Caterham while Daniil Kvyat was also just on track for the first time at Toro Rosso. The young Russian just attained his super license one week before the US GP weekend and will similarly be allowed to run FP1 in Brazil to prepare for 2014.

At Lotus, Heikki Kovalainen debuts here as well, replacing Raikkonen in this and the final race of the season. After 2 installation laps however, the Finn came back to the pits with some requests to modify his race seat.

Only at 10:28 the session got going again after a backup medical helicopter landed at the circuit. It seemed like the primary one had an issue that made it impossible to get it to the track. At the time, there's little more than 31 minutes left in the session.

5 minutes later, all cars are out on track as everybody now needs to complete a programme that was scheduled out to be completed in 90 minutes, rather than the 30 that remain.

Most drivers decided to do a lot of laps in that final part of the session, with Vettel notably not coming before the end. Alonso meanwhile quickly took the top of the timesheet going slightly quicker than Button's early time. Valtteri Bottas in the end came pretty close to the top of the timesheet but stranded third, 0.045 seconds off of the leading Ferrari.