» German GP 1st Practice: Sutil heads wet Hockenheim session

Adrian Sutil has done his now-customary wet-weather display by comfortably heading the timesheets in the opening practice session for the German Grand Prix, which, you guessed it, was held in mixed conditions.

However, it was rather pear-shaped down at McLaren with Lewis Hamilton had a mighty shunt during the session, comprehensively ruining three corners of his McLaren Mercedes.

The former World Champion – who was a victor the last time the F1 circus visited Hockenheim – overcorrected through a puddle at Turn 3, 70 minutes into the session. His car snapped to the right and across the grass, where he mangled three corners of the car after collecting the wall.

For Sutil the wet-weather specialist, it was a trouble-free opening practice session, where he was a feature throughout the latter half of the session as conditions began to improve. His best time of 1:25.701 – over a second quicker than any rival – was set when the track was at its driest.

A surprise second-quickest was none other than Felipe Massa – never known as a driver able to master damp track conditions – who managed a quick time but was his more typical all-at-sea self in the conditions for much of the 90-minute session. The Brazilian driver had no less than five wild moments in his Ferrari, where he either swapped ends or went sailing across the grass.

Despite complaining about the handling of his McLaren, Jenson Button posted the third-quickest time of the 24-strong field.

He was followed by three of the 2010 grid’s other wet-weather stylists, Rubens Barrichello in the Williams, Vitaly Petrov in Renault, and Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes GP.

Both Toro Rossos featured highly on the timesheets for much of the session, with Sébastien Buemi winding up seventh-quickest at the end of the session, although team-mate Jaime Alguersuari fell down to 16th overall in the closing minutes of the session.

The mixed conditions saw some drivers who should have featured in the reckoning well down the order – either by misadventure or traffic – with the likes of Sebastian Vettel (11th), Mark Webber (14th), Fernando Alonso (19th) and Michael Schumacher (23rd) not featuring prominently.

In turn, that presented some of the lesser runners with moments in the sun. Most notable of these was Timo Glock, whose rather ordinary Virgin VR-01 seemed to revel in the damp environment, winding up in the giddily high position of 12th at the end of the session. Similarly, Jarno Trulli was 15th quickest in his Lotus.

2010 German GP Practice 1 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes	1:25.701	20
2.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	+ 1.149	27
3.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes	+ 1.235	16
4.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth	+ 1.246	21
5.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	+ 1.247	21
6.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	+ 1.747	20
7.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 2.413	31
8.	Nico Hülkenberg	Williams Cosworth	+ 2.492	24
9.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India Mercedes	+ 2.599	19
10.	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber Ferrari	+ 2.785	23
11.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault	+ 3.034	21
12.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 3.034	21
13.	Robert Kubica	Renault	+ 3.202	20
14.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault	+ 3.347	13
15.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Cosworth	+ 3.579	17
16.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 3.665	34
17.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes	+ 3.728	8
18.	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 3.799	19
19.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	+ 3.983	15
20.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari	+ 3.989	17
21.	Fairuz Fauzy	Lotus Cosworth	+ 5.237	27
22.	Bruno Senna	HRT Cosworth	+ 6.019	23
23.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	+ 6.749	13
24.	Sakon Yamamoto	HRT Cosworth	+ 7.090	26