Fernando Alonso edged Lewis Hamilton to claim the fastest time of the first practice session of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with Nico Rosberg third.

The Ferrari driver’s lap of 1m49.056s was good enough to beat Hamilton by 0.122 seconds, two hundredths of a second further back.

Rosberg topped the times in the early parts of the opening P130 tyre phase but his time was soon beaten by Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel and Alonso. Once the extra set of primes had been handed back, Rosberg once more leapt to the top of the table, this time two seconds than his previous best.

It wasn’t good enough to keep him there, however, and first he was beaten by his Mercedes team-mate, who remained the faster of the two Mercedes for the remainder of the session. Hamilton, too, was demoted when, with 30 minutes remaining in the session, Alonso found an extra reservoir of pace to jump ahead of the Mercedes.

Behind the top three, Vettel took fourth spot, ahead of the team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. The Renault-powered team are expected to mount a challenge around the streets of Singapore thanks to the better downforce of the RB10, but Vettel ended the first session eight tenths of a second adrift of Alonso’s benchmark. Ricciardo was juts over a tenth of a second further back. Vettel also suffered a suspected power unit failure at the end of the session.

The sixth fastest time was recorded by Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne, the Frenchman finishing over 0.2s ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who hit trouble at the end of the session when his front brakes caught fire in pit lane.

Jenson Button finished eight for McLaren ahead of the second Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat and 10th-placed Sergio Perez of Force India.

2014 Singapore Grand Prix – Practice 1 Times

1 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:49.056 16

2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:49.178 0.122 23

3 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:49.205 0.149 24

4 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing 1:49.874 0.818 27

5 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing 1:50.122 1.066 21

6 Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso 1:50.539 1.483 11

7 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:50.783 1.727 19

8 Jenson Button McLaren 1:50.922 1.866 21

9 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:50.990 1.934 26

10 Sergio Perez Force India 1:51.131 2.075 23

11 Kevin Magnussen McLaren 1:51.217 2.161 24

12 Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1:51.604 2.548 23

13 Felipe Massa Williams 1:51.953 2.897 20

14 Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1:52.125 3.069 25

15 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:52.146 3.090 19

16 Esteban Gutierrez Sauber 1:52.171 3.115 15

17 Adrian Sutil Sauber 1:52.237 3.181 22

18 Romain Grosjean Lotus 1:52.906 3.850 26

19 Jules Bianchi Marussia 1:54.113 5.057 15

20 Marcus Ericsson Caterham 1:54.475 5.419 26

21 Kamui Kobayashi Caterham 1:54.607 5.551 21

22 Max Chilton Marussia 1:55.170 6.114 17