Ferrari's Felipe Massa dominated Malaysian Grand Prix practice yesterday to leave his Formula One rivals feeling the heat.

Massa produced a best time of one minute 34.972 in the first session and was also quickest in the afternoon with a lap of 1:35.780 as track temperatures at Sepang reached 49° Celsius.

The Brazilian's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was second for much of the day's final session before the Renaults of Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen dropped him to fourth in the final minutes.

Raikkonen, championship leader after winning in Australia on his Ferrari debut last month, was also fourth in the morning.

McLaren's double world champion Fernando Alonso and British rookie Lewis Hamilton had been second and third on the timesheets in that first session.

Massa is looking to capitalize on Ferrari's early-season superiority after finishing sixth in Australia, having been forced to start from the back of the grid following an engine change.

Alonso was 12th fastest for McLaren in the afternoon, three places behind Hamilton.

The later 90-minute session was halted with 13 minutes left when the right rear tyre of Spyker's Christijan Albers was shredded in the heat.

Race stewards red flagged practice to allow marshals to clear away the rubber.

After the session resumed, Red Bull's Australian Mark Webber had to be pushed off the circuit after he stopped with a blown engine.

No engine change for Raikkonen

Raikkonen plans to start tomorrow's race with the same engine that took him to victory in last month's Australian season-opener, despite earlier fears that it may be damaged.

Replacing the engine would cost the Finn 10 places on the starting grid, with Formula One rules stipulating that the units must be used for two races.

"We are going to keep it. There is no reason to change it," Raikkonen told a news conference.

Ferrari team principal Jean Todt said the concern about Raikkonen's engine had been overblown.

"The whole story about the engine came from outside speculation and not from us," said the Frenchman.

"Yes, there seemed to be a problem with Kimi's pipe which maybe lost a bit of water.

"After all the testing we saw nothing to demonstrate that we should change our preparations for the race or change the engine."

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