Vettel, returning to the Yas Marina circuit a year on from
becoming Formula One's youngest champion, skidded off at turn one with more
than half an hour remaining of the second floodlit session.
The Red Bull driver, who has already wrapped up his second
title, got back out on track near the end of the 90 minutes but was powerless
to prevent Hamilton ending the day on top of the timesheets with team mate
Jenson Button second in a Friday sweep for McLaren.
Hamilton's time of one minute 39.586 seconds was 0.199
faster than Button. The older Briton had been quickest in the opening afternoon
daylight session in 1:40.263.
"It was a really positive day for me," said
Hamilton, who has not enjoyed many of those this year.
"The car feels good, our long run pace doesn't feel too
bad and we seem to be quite competitive. The car feels a lot better than it did
in the last race." Vettel's impact with the barriers was nothing to
concern the team too much, particularly as the 24-year-old has three times this
season crashed on Friday before taking pole position on Saturday.
"I think I was too wide and too far on to the kerb, so
I lost the rear and couldn't catch the car anymore," said the champion.
"There wasn't much damage apart from the front wing." Ferrari may
have been more troubled when Fernando Alonso, also a double champion, then went
off at the same turn and clouted the barriers with rather more force.
The Spaniard, who still ended up third fastest, also had a
spin in the opening practice.
Vettel's Australian teammate Mark Webber was second on the
Yas Marina timing screens in the first session but slipped to fifth as the
night fell.
Some less familiar names also enjoyed a moment in the
limelight in opening practice, with Robert Wickens the first Canadian to appear
on track in a grand prix weekend since 1997 champion Jacques Villeneuve
departed the scene in 2006.
While Wickens replaced Belgian Jerome d'Ambrosio at Virgin
Racing for the first session, Frenchmen Jean-Eric Vergne and Romain Grosjean
took the wheel at Toro Rosso and Renault respectively.
Wickens was 23rd out of the 24, half a second slower than
team mate Timo Glock but ahead of Rubens Barrichello who failed to set a time
after a problem halted his Williams.
Vergne was 11th on the timesheets, right up with Toro
Rosso's regular race driver Jaime Alguersuari, while GP2 champion Grosjean
marked his return to the F1 cockpit with a time quicker than Renault's Vitaly
Petrov.
Vettel and Red Bull have already clinched this year's
championships but the German can still claim some Formula One records.
If the champion takes pole position on Saturday he will
equal the record of 14 in a single season set by Britain's Nigel Mansell in
1992.
If Vettel wins the penultimate race of the year on Sunday,
he will remain on track to equal Michael Schumacher's unprecedented tally of 13
triumphs in a season.
The German said, however, that he was not thinking about
such milestones.
"It will be wrong to say that I want to beat this
record or that record if it is possible," he told reporters. "Then,
you are thinking of the record and how to break the record. And I think you
will fail if you think that way."
