Pedro de la Rosa repeated his Jerez success and topped the times on Day One at Barcelona. De la Rosa, testing on his home track, put in a time of 1:22.634 to top the time sheets. Robert Kubica in his BMW was only a thousandth of a second behind though, backing up Massa’s thoughts that BMW will be a force to be reckoned with in 2007.
Fernando Alonso came third with his McLaren, less that a tenth off the pace, with Alex Wurz fourth quickest in his Williams.
Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen came in fifth and sixth, but it wasn’t a happy day for the two Ferrari drivers. Raikkonen appears to have brought his reliability bad luck from McLaren across to Ferrari with Massa breaking down on lap one and later on, Raikkonen pulling over with another electronics failure.
Other casualties on the circuit were Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber, both of whom had red flags out when they had to stop their cars; Robert Kubica also caused a stoppage when BMW deliberately made him run until his car ran out of fuel; Lastly, Rubens Barrichello had an excursion into the gravel trap.
