Red Bull energised by practice success

Ordinarily, not too much is read into Friday practice times as you can never be certain as to fuel level, tyre usage and wear, as well as potentially any new parts being tested on a car.

But after the two 90-minute sessions at Silverstone, it is fair to assume Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber will be the class act of the field on Sunday, with their cars sporting a number of upgrades, in particular a new nose dubbed 'duck breast'.

In both the morning and afternoon, the duo were head and shoulders above the rest of the field, with Vettel on top on each occasion, narrowly edging out Webber.

The young German's fastest lap of the day came in the dying embers of first practice, knocking Webber off top spot with a lap of one minute 19.400 seconds, with the 21-year-old only 0.056secs slower in the second session.

Australian Webber, who finished 0.282secs adrift in the morning, managed to exactly halve that deficit later on, but as for the rest, they were left floundering.

The first period saw Button third-fastest, but 0.827secs down on Vettel, and then in the second it was the remarkable sight of Force India's Adrian Sutil riding high in third, albeit 0.685secs down.

Williams' Kazuki Nakajima was fourth, followed by Fernando Alonso in his Renault and title hopeful Rubens Barrichello for Brawn GP.

As for world champion Lewis Hamilton, who won the race here last year by a remarkable margin of 68 seconds in the wet, he was a respectable seventh in his McLaren, just under a second down.

The top 10 was completed by Toyota's Jarno Trulli, Nico Rosberg in his Williams and the Renault of Nelson Piquet.