ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The third practice session before Saturday’s qualifying here has just ended with Lew Hamilton taking the fastest time, just ahead of Sebastian Vettel. Qualifying is looking tight.  But it was Friday’s practice sessions that I still had on my mind. They were interesting for personal and professional reasons.  Let’s start with the personal: It was very difficult to pick favorites in the morning between two rookies who took their first real spin in a Formula One car as part of the series’ effort to provide driving time to young hopefuls. This program had been used a few years ago, then canceled — as the regular drivers had to give up valuable track time to make way for the rookies — but it was brought back to help prepare future drivers for the series, as they had few other opportunities to try out an Formula One car.  The two drivers on Friday were former World Series FR3.5 series teammates who finished first and second in that series. FR3.5 is one of the many series of open-wheel racing that leads to Formula One. It turns out that I have followed both drivers closely for different reasons. The two fought for the title to the last race this year, which was won by a small margin by Robert Wickens, who is from Toronto. The other driver is Jean-Eric Vergne, a Frenchman I have known for several years, and with whom I won a go-kart race for journalists and go-karting champions five years ago when he was 16, as I reported on this blog. (Vergne actually had a practice session scheduled in the F1 car at the race in South Korea last month, but it was rained out.)  It was hard to choose which one to root for, when you have raced with one and the other is a fellow Canadian. On this morning, Vergne got the better deal with a drive in the Toro Rosso, while Wickens drove the Marussia Virgin, which is not as fast a car. Vergne finished 11th fastest, 0.2 seconds behind the regular Toro Rosso driver, Jaime Alguersuari. Wickens finished 23rd, 0.5 behind the regular Marussia Virgin driver, Timo Glock.  A good showing for both.  In the afternoon session I noticed an interesting symmetry in the results. With the exception of the drivers at the Mercedes and the Lotus Renault teams, all the teams’ drivers finished the session with one of the team’s drivers directly in front of the other in lap times:  Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1m39.586s 31 2. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m39.785s + 0.199 30 3. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m39.971s + 0.385 20 4. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m39.980s + 0.394 34 5. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m40.104s + 0.518 35 6. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m40.132s + 0.546 26 7. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m40.553s + 0.967 34 8. Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1m40.951s + 1.365 34 9. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m41.021s + 1.435 37 10. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 1m41.490s + 1.904 34 11. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m41.565s + 1.979 34 12. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m41.680s + 2.094 33 13. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m41.947s + 2.361 31 14. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m41.983s + 2.397 34 15. Bruno Senna Renault 1m42.369s + 2.783 36 16. Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 1m42.798s + 3.212 35 17. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Cosworth 1m42.910s + 3.324 34 18. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Renault 1m43.562s + 3.976 36 19. Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 1m44.050s + 4.464 38 20. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m44.265s + 4.679 41 21. Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 1m45.486s + 5.900 34 22. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth 1m46.142s + 6.556 32 23. Tonio Liuzzi HRT-Cosworth 1m46.249s + 6.663 21 24. Daniel Ricciardo HRT-Cosworth 1m46.328s + 6.742 34  In the meantime, while awaiting the race, I have more reading material for the restless in my race preview section with an article about the question of the modern versus the old circuits, with a Paddock Postcard on Abu Dhabi and with a team portrait of McLaren Mercedes.
A couple of rookies test Formula One cars in Abu Dhabi, while the regular drivers all line up in team order.