Welcome to F1Minute, it’s the 8th May 2009.

Button led the way in Free Practice 1 this morning, with Barcelona playing host to a relatively quiet first session. Rosberg had been attempting to top the timesheets, as per usual, but spun off halfway through the session.

However, he got it right in the afternoon, with Kazuki Nakajima making it a Williams 1-2. The pair of them led the way for most of the session, but our attention was mostly on Piquet who had several different incidents, some of them involving gravel. Buemi also had troubles when his Toro Rosso started smoking on its first trip out, but he was soon fixed. Notably, Sutil couldn’t participate in the session at all due to a fuel cell problem.

Speaking of Toro Rosso, team principal Franz Tost has confirmed that they are well on their way to becoming an independent constructor for next season. It has always been the plan, and the team have gradually been building up to shoulder the full design process from 2010.

That’s it for today, I’ll be back tomorrow with another F1Minute.