This is it, the F1 season 2006 has officialy started.
First car on track was the Williams Cosworth of Alexander Wurz.
The first half of the practice was mainly a time fight from Alexander Wurz against Robert Kubica in the BMW Sauber. The 2nd half saw many installation laps and at the end also some times of the top drivers. As expected the Super Aguri F1's were very slow, but this is not their final car for this season (this will probably start on the european season). Noteworthy thing: There were so many reporters around the Ferrari pits that one could think Michael Schumacher is still world champion.
Also very interesting is that we saw many fights on the track, which is somewhat surprising
for a first practice.
On the engine side my personal impression is that ,though the V8 are slower ,they soundgreat .

Here are the times of the first practice:

1. Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber) 1:32,170
2. Alexander Wurz (Williams Cosworth) 1:32,184
3. Kimi Räikkönen (McLaren Mercedes) 1:33.388
4. Michael Schumacher (Scuderia Ferrari) 1:33.469
5. Christian Klien (Red Bull Racing) 1:34.800
6. Neel Jani (Scuderia Toro Rosso) 1:34.831
7. Juan-Pablo Montoya (McLaren Mercedes)1:34.887
8. Felippe Massa (Scuderia Ferrari) 1:34.925
9. David Coulthard (Red Bull Racing) 1:35.017
10. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Scuderia Toro Rosso) 1:35.083
11. Robert Doornbos (Red Bull Racing) 1:35.203
12. Scott Speed (Scuderia Toro Rosso) 1:35.371
13. Tiago Monteiro (Midland F1) 1:36.542
14. Christian Albers (Midland F1) 1:36.930
15. Markus Winkelhock (Midland F1) 1:37.918
16. Takuma Sato (Super Aguri) 1:38.190
17. Yuji Ide (Super Aguri) 1:40.782

Nice work!

A bit misleading at the moment I reckon - but it shows BMW and Williams have made some steps forward to be that far ahead of Midland and Redbull. Pretty much 3 seconds a lap is a lot even if the slower cars are working on race sets or something.