It is advantage McLaren following the opening day's practice for this weekend's British Grand Prix – even if Ferrari's Felipe Massa did narrowly end up with the quickest time at the close of play.

Heikki Kovalainen topped the times in the slower afternoon session on Friday, more than half a second clear of the chasing pack. The Finn would wind up second on the overall timesheets, however, barely a hundredth of a second adrift of the top spot and almost four hundredths in front of McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, with both drivers professing themselves content with early progress.

“We seemed to find a nice balance almost immediately,” Kovalainen related, “and waited for the track to come to us throughout both sessions. The trick here is to balance the set-up between the high and slow-speed corners, and I feel that we're getting closer to achieving that. We shouldn't get carried away with being fastest on Friday afternoon, but we've got a good basis for Sunday.”

“It was good to see so many fans at the circuit so early this morning!” added home hero Hamilton. “Although we'd only tested here last week, the track felt quite different today. The car's balance felt very good, despite my having a little grassy moment at turn eight. Into the afternoon, the car felt increasingly consistent, and I feel we've got a good benchmark for the weekend ahead.”

The Woking-based outfit's team principal Ron Dennis and Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Vice-President Norbert Haug were in similarly confident spirits, as McLaren bids to regain the top step of the rostrum on home soil, after being beaten respectively by BMW-Sauber and Ferrari in the last two grands prix.

“The British Grand Prix is the home race for all the hard-working people at Woking and Brixworth and, as such, it is a particularly important event for everybody at McLaren-Mercedes,” Dennis underlined.

“Today's practice performances look encouraging, and neither driver reported any major problems – but we remain mindful that there is still much work to complete, and we are fully aware of the threat of wet weather for the remainder of the weekend.”

“A productive first test day,” agreed Haug, “with good and consistent lap times by Heikki and Lewis. However, the weather forecast for tomorrow and Sunday predicts heavy rain, therefore today's findings will be only of limited help.”

Despite setting the day's best time, meanwhile, things were far from as straightforward for world championship leader Massa, the driver with more race wins to his name in 2008 to-date than any other. The Brazilian was caught out by oil spilled on the entrance to turn seven by Fernando Alonso's Renault during the morning running, losing grip and spinning backwards into the tyre barriers at almost 300km/h.