The result gave McLaren their sixty-second front-row lock-out, breaking the previous record set by Williams.

Lotus driver Romain Grosjean did not participate in the race due to receiving a one-race ban for his involvement in the first-lap incident at the Belgian Grand Prix that saw four cars crash heavily at the La Source hairpin.

[12] Ma Qinghua became the first Chinese driver to take part in a Grand Prix weekend when he drove Narain Karthikeyan's HRT F112 in the first free practice session on Friday morning.

[13] Valtteri Bottas drove Bruno Senna's Williams FW34 in the same session, while Jules Bianchi took Paul di Resta's place at Force India.

Mercedes AMG driver Michael Schumacher was fastest in the first practice session, three-tenths of a second quicker than Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg.

[14] For Lotus, Jérôme d'Ambrosio finished the session fifteenth, over a second and a half slower than Schumacher and sixth-tenths down on teammate Kimi Räikkönen.

At the end of the session, both Fernando Alonso and Pastor Maldonado were observed to stop on the circuit with technical problems.

Having set the fastest time in the morning session, Schumacher finished tenth following a series of off-track excursions.

[16] Paul di Resta finished the session third, while Sebastian Vettel suffered a loss of power on his final lap and pulled over at the Roggia chicane.

The Red Bull RB8 was consistently one of the slowest cars through the speed trap, evidenced by the way neither Red Bull driver featured in the top ten runners in any of the free practice sessions, with the exception of Mark Webber, who set the ninth-fastest time of the first session.

Senna went straight through the chicane and back onto the racing line right in front of Mark Webber, who dodged around him as they entered the first Lesmo corner.

Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel pitted at the same time on lap 21, and came out right behind Massa with only a car's length separating each of the three.