Alonso goes quickest in first practice for the German Grand Prix

The Ferrari driver, who scored his first win of the season at Silverstone two weeks ago, was the only man to lap the Nurburgring circuit in the 1m31s.

Alonso finished ahead of Red Bull duo Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, who were over three tenths slower than the Spaniard.

Ferrari completed a solid start to the weekend thanks to Felipe Massa's fourth fastest time, the Brazilian outpacing the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, who was fifth fastest but over a second off Alonso's pace.

Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil, Nico Hulkenberg and Michael Schumacher completed the top 10.

Renault's Nick Heidfeld was the first driver to complete a timed lap after 20 minutes, the German trying out the new rear-facing exhaust system introduced by the team this weekend.

Local hero Nico Rosberg jumped to the top of the times moments later with a lap of 1m35.11s, before he was demoted by Hamilton, who lapped in the 1m34s only to improve by over 1.4 seconds on his following lap. A few minutes later, the Briton moved into the 1m32s, leaving Rosberg two seconds off his pace.

Hamilton was relegated to second place with some 52 minutes of the session to go, when Vettel outpaced him by two tenths of a second in the Red Bull.

Alonso leaped to the top of the timesheets just after the one-hour mark, the Spaniard stopping the clock at 1m32.037s. The Ferrari driver improved even further on his following lap, moving into the 1m31s and outpacing Webber by over two tenths, the Australian having jumped to second.

The session was yellow-flagged with less than a minute to go when Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi went off the track at high speed at Turn 5. The Swiss driver was lucky to avoid contact with anything and his car ended up stuck on the gravel.

Karun Chandhok made his debut as an official racing driver for Team Lotus, the Indian having a rather productive session on his way to the 21st quickest time of the day. He finished two seconds behind team-mate Heikki Kovalainen.

Chandhok's countryman Narain Karthikeyan was back in action after losing his HRT seat to Daniel Ricciardo, replacing Tonio Liuzzi for the opening session.

The circuit was covered by a grey clouds during the 90 minutes, but rain held off for the whole session.

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time               Laps
 1.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m31.894s           30
 2.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m32.217s  + 0.323  24
 3.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m32.268s  + 0.374  27
 4.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m32.681s  + 0.787  23
 5.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m32.996s  + 1.102  18
 6.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m33.628s  + 1.734  22
 7.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m33.787s  + 1.893  33
 8.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m33.832s  + 1.938  27
 9.  Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes  1m33.858s  + 1.964  26
10.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m33.863s  + 1.969  31
11.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault               1m34.094s  + 2.200  22
12.  Jaime Alguersuari     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m35.115s  + 3.221  23
13.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m35.371s  + 3.477  20
14.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth     1m35.389s  + 3.495  24
15.  Nick Heidfeld         Renault               1m35.444s  + 3.550  22
16.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        1m36.371s  + 4.477  22
17.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault         1m36.392s  + 4.498  29
18.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth     1m36.842s  + 4.948  29
19.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari        1m36.882s  + 4.988  27
20.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth          1m38.504s  + 6.610  22
21.  Karun Chandhok        Lotus-Renault         1m38.765s  + 6.871  19
22.  Daniel Ricciardo      HRT-Cosworth          1m39.279s  + 7.385  24
23.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth       1m40.109s  + 8.215  23
24.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth       1m40.428s  + 8.534  22

All Timing Unofficial