By Sam Cooper
September 14 2007

Despite McLaren’s off track issues that McLaren have suffered from in the past few days, the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes formula one team have made a successful start to their Belgian Grand Prix by completing a problem free first Friday practice session. Lewis Hamilton ended the session 2nd while Fernando Alonso ended the session 3rd.

Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen finished the session first in his Ferrari F2007, beating current championship leader Lewis Hamilton to first place by 0.5 seconds. Hamilton was second, with Fernando Alonso 3rd.

BMW driver Nick Heidfeld ended the session in 4th place just ahead of AT&T Williams driver Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica finished the first session 3 tenths behind Kubica in the second BMW.

Williams driver Alex Wurz and Jarno Trulli ended the session 7th and 8th respectively, the pair a whopping 1.7 seconds behind pace setter Kimi Räikkönen. Hekki Kovalainen ended up in 9th place, with Britain’s Jenson Button rounding out the top 10.

Felipe Massa went off at Rivage, Felipe’s car ran across the gravel trap and lightly hit the wall, Felipe got away with little damage, but was unable to continue with his practice program.

Midway into the session Scuderia Torro Rosso driver Vitantonio Liuzzi ran off into the barrier, fortunately for the Italian his car wasn’t too badly damaged.

Spyker driver Sakon Yammamoto ran across the bus stop chicane and stopped his car on the start finish straight.

Times from the session are shown below.