2001 French Grand Prix 
First Friday Practice Session  

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First Friday Practice Session Report - Results

Mika Hakkinen set the fastest time of the session ahead of Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard. Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya make the top 6.

There was not much thrilling action during the session as the fastest times were set around mid session and as the track temperatures rose only a few drivers managed to improve.

Several cars had problems, mainly spinning with Eddie Irvine the first casualty spinning on his first time lap. Michael Schumacher, Jarno Trulli, Jenson Button and Luciano Burti all had spins but only Burti failed to recover and was stuck in the gravel.
Ralf Schumacher had his session cut short when he suffered a problem and stopped on the track. Despite that he managed 5th fastest!. Enrique Bernoldi also stopped on the track in the final minutes of the session.

While there is half a second separating the top 3, the top 9 are covered by 1 second while the top 14 by 2 seconds.

Pedro de la Rosa covered the most number of laps with 24 ahead of Montoya of with 23. Eddie Irvine only covered an installation lap and an out-lap before spinning while Ralf Schumacher only managed 5 laps and David Coulthard only covered 13.

While the times are quicker than last year, they are not by much. Hakkinen's time is just over half a second faster than the fastest time set on the 1st Friday practice session last year.   

The weather was fairly hot with air temperature around 25 degrees and track temperatures exceeding 40 degrees.

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