Rosberg dominates first day of F1 practice

Looks like what everyone predicted all through out the run down to the first Grand Prix of 2009 in Melbourne is coming true - that there are currently no predictions at all!
Session 1
As the Force India cars of Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella rolled out of the pit lane and onto the track at Albert Park for the first time in 2009, it marked the beginning of a new season in F1.
The track was to be open for another hour-and-a-half as the 20 competing cars of the 2009 grid put down lap after lap of the Melbourne circuit in the first session of free practice on Friday.
The only rookie in the line up for the year - Sebastien Buemi was the first driver to put down an official time in his Scuderia Toro Rosso STR4 - clocking in a 1m 36.659s lap.
Ferrari were quick to move into the lead though, with Kimi Raikkonen putting in a 1m 28.718s lap. Soon, as expected after looking at times from group tests, there was a big tussle going on between Brawn GP, McLaren, Willaims, Toyota and Red Bull as they kept shaving off vital seconds from Raikkonen's set time.
The former World Champion reacted and recorded a blistering 1m26.750s lap which seemed like it would stick till the end of the session. But surprise, surprise - Nico Rosberg came out of nowhere and ended the session fastest with 1m26.687s while team mate for Williams, Nakajima lapped in 1m 26.736s!
Finishing up the top ten behind Raikkonen's Ferrari were the BGP 001s of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button sandwiching Heiki Kovalainen in fifth.
Then came Massa, Glock, Sutil for Force India and Fernando Alonso in tenth. Lewis Hamilton could only manage 16th and Vettel rolled in with the slowest time after having put in only 4 laps before his RB5 succumbed to hydraulic problems.
Session 2
One look at the list of drivers who kept exchanging fastest times in the second session of Friday Practice today and that just about sums up how evenly matched (or inversely matched) this field is!
That list included Jarno Trulli, Timo Glock, Mark Webber, Adrian Sutil, Kazuki Nakajima, Heikki Kovalainen, Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button - barring Kovalainen, none of those drivers have been even close to the top runners in the 2008 season.
To add to that, the fastest time for the session - put up by the Williams of Nico Rosberg at 1m 26.053s was considerably lower than Hamilton's 2008 pole position time.
The three teams that were accused of running non-compliant rear diffusers set the fastest times with Barrichello following Rosberg.
Trulli's Toyota was third fastest followed by Mark Webber's Red Bull Racing RB5 in the mix ahead of Jenson Button, Timo Glock and Kazuki Nakajima.
Vettel once again had problems as he spun off and had to be content with eighth place ahead of Adrian Sutil's Force India VJM 02.
The two Ferraris were the fastest of the cars running KERS with Massa leading Raikkonen for tenth and eleventh spots. Both Ferrari and McLaren have cars this year that are proving to be a handful as all four drivers for the two teams had off-track excursions during the course of the practice.
In the end, there was only a gap of about 2 seconds separating the 20 cars. It's less than 24 hours to qualifying now, and if both Friday Practice sessions are anything to go by, 2009 is going to be awesome!