Ferrari´s Fernando Alonso took control of first practice at Circuit Of The Americas just ahead of McLaren´s Jenson Button after a delayed start and then a red flag because of heavy fog that impeded the Medic Helicopter to land at the track.
Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Gutierrez put their Williams and Sauber in third and fourth behind Button and ahead of the Mercedes of Roosberg and Hamilton.
Heikki Kovalainen started off well at Lotus after almost a year without racing and without being familiar to the car just 2 tenths of a second slower than teammate Romain Grosjean.
Times are not that representative in first practice as drivers usually improve 2 or 3 seconds towards qualifying on saturday but they are a good base for the times they could be posting on race conditions.
The german Sebastian Vettel finished a distant 18th on the time sheet with a 1:40.662 just ahead of the Marussias and the Caterhams compared to the 1:38.343 of leader Alonso. Times are proving tight as usual but the chance of rain is almost gone so they only promise to drop as we can only point out at the record from last year already gone by a full second as track conditions are a lot better this year.
2nd practice will take time in one hour at 1pm Austin time.
