Hamilton leads first day of Spa test

The McLaren driver, who finished third in his home race at Silverstone on Sunday, finished four tenths quicker than BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica.

Ferrari's Felipe Massa was third quickest for Ferrari, but was interestingly eight tenths slower than Hamilton.

Ralf Schumacher ended the day with the fourth fastest time, ahead of Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr, who evaluated some new updates on the R27 that the team are hoping will lead to improvements in form over the next few races. The Brazilian caused one red flag in the morning when his car stopped just after the final chicane.

David Coulthard also caused a red flag when his Red Bull Racing car stopped out on the track just before 3pm, having also encountered gearbox problems earlier in the day.

But he still ended the day sixth quickest having not gone for the single-lap performance that some of the cars ahead of him had.

Behind Nico Rosberg, Vitantonio Liuzzi also caused a red flag in the morning when he lost some bodywork.  He also suffered a transmission problem near the end of the test.

The Italian hands his Scuderia Toro Rosso car over to Sebastien Bourdais tomorrow, with the Frenchman now testing for two days as the team evaluate his potential for a race seat next year.

James Rossiter was seventh fastest for Super Aguri, ahead of Christian Klien in the Honda and Giedo van der Garde in the Spyker.

The teams were allowed two special 10-minute sessions of practice starts during the course of the day, as they finalised their settings for the Belgian Grand Prix.

                    
Pos  Driver        Team                     Time      Laps
 1.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes    (B)  1:46.613  81
 2.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber          (B)  1:47.059  80
 3.  Massa         Ferrari             (B)  1:47.469  63
 4.  R.Schumacher  Toyota              (B)  1:47.787  69
 5.  Piquet        Renault             (B)  1:47.997  50
 6.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault    (B)  1:48.243  53
 7.  Rossiter      Super Aguri-Honda   (B)  1:48.287  64
 8.  Liuzzi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari  (B)  1:49.179  63
 9.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota     (B)  1:49.228  60
10.  Klien         Honda               (B)  1:49.419  63
11.  van de Garde  Spyker-Ferrari      (B)  1:49.712  53
             
All timing unofficial