Alonso tops wet first practice at Spa

F1 Grand Prix, GP Belgium, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps

Fernando Alonso emerged on top of the timesheet in the first practice session at Spa-Francorchamps. The session was dominated by the weather, with a morning shower and light drizzle during the session making it tricky for the drivers to nail a strong lap.

Following about half an hour of dry weather, light drizzle returned to the track, but not enough to make the track any wetter than it was before.

When that rain finally cleared, Mark Webber was the first to change to slick tyres, opting for the hard compound. The dry part of the circuit between turns 8 and 16 play into his hands, and by lap 3 he's moved up to 7th, ahead of 5 intermediate runners.

At this halfway point, Raikkonen completed 8 laps, most of any driver thus far as Lotus were busy trying to verify some changes to its DRD.

Webber's improvements were soon noticed and triggered Vettel to also go out on the slicks, as well as the McLaren drivers. A bit later, with 35 minutes left on the clock, Perez is the first to top the times on slicks, confirming that the track is drying.

A few minutes later every single driver is out on track to benefit from the temporarily improved track conditions. As times tumbled quickly, Alonso eventually emerged on top, ahead of Di Resta. The best times however are the result of drivers setting a laptime at the right time, not necessarily of outright pace.

Sebastian Vettel for instance was quick on several occassions but made several mistakes in the final turn, ruining his laps. Kimi Raikkonen on the other hand did only complete a single lap on dry weather tyres before bowing out of it.

The weather is likely to improve ahead of FP2 with the track possibly dry for the afternoon session.