USA Tops First Practice at Brands

Scott Speed, who dominated the last official free practice at Paul Ricard last month, again was the quickest of the 25 National teams.

Nelson Piquet Jr, returning for the first time to the track where he clinched the 2004 British F3 championship, was second in the Brazilian entry. Nicolas Lapierre, in the French entry, pipped local hero Robbie Kerr in the British car.

The biggest red-flag causing incident was for Team India's Karun Chandhok, who was airborne when he collided with Jos Verstappen's bright orange Team Netherlands car at the Druids hairpin.

Chandhok had let Will Power through at the slow corner and didn't appear to see Verstappen, who tried to follow the Team Australia car through. The pair touched, launching Chandhok into the air.
 
The Team India car landed the correct way up, but the underside was badly damaged and the front right corner suspension was badly damaged.

The other red flags were caused by Qinghua Ma, who spun the Chinese car at Paddock Hill Bend, and by Alexey Vasiliev's Russian car, which collided with Michael Davaney's Team Ireland machine.

Pos Team             Time             Laps
 1. USA              1:16.875          16
 2. Brazil           1:17.156 + 0.281  12
 3. France           1:17.215 + 0.340  17
 4. Great Britain    1:17.463 + 0.588  18
 5. Malaysia         1:17.578 + 0.703  16
 6. Australia        1:17.673 + 0.798  28
 7. Switzerland      1:17.731 + 0.856  21
 8. Portugal         1:17.741 + 0.866  17
 9. Netherlands      1:17.970 + 1.095  17
10. Mexico           1:17.997 + 1.122  25
11. New Zealand      1:18.157 + 1.282  21
12. Germany          1:18.344 + 1.469  13
13. Canada           1:18.470 + 1.595  26
14. South Africa     1:18.639 + 1.764  20
15. Japan            1:18.860 + 1.985  26
16. Pakistan         1:18.932 + 2.057  11
17. Czech Republic   1:19.397 + 2.522  18
18. Lebanon          1:19.491 + 2.616  22
19. Ireland          1:19.542 + 2.667  13
20. Austria          1:19.674 + 2.799  13
21. Indonesia        1:20.125 + 3.250  14
22. Russia           1:22.905 + 6.030  12
23. Italy            1:25.324 + 8.449   3
24. China            1:26.555 + 9.680  13
25. India            1:28.606 + 11.731  2

All Timing Unofficial