There’s a keen rivalry between Lotus and Virgin in Formula 1 this year. Don’t forget that little bet between their respective bosses, Richard Branson and Tony Fernandes.

Up to now, it’s been very close between the two teams. In Turkey this morning, however, it looks like Lotus have opened up a gap over Virgin. So let’s look more closely at how many seconds off the fastest time the best Lotus and Virgin has been in each first practice session this year.

Clearly this is the first time that there’s been a really meaningful gap between the two teams. It could, of course, be an anomaly. It is very early in the weekend, after all.

But there are other signs. As Mike Gascoyne pointed out on Twitter, Lotus look to have closed the gap to the midfield – particularly Toro Rosso. Indeed, Heikki Kovalainen was less than half a second off Jaime Alguersuari this morning.

What’s more, it was the first time that HRT have gone faster than Virgin in a first practice session, Karun Chandhok going about 0.3 seconds faster than Lucas di Grassi, the fastest Virgin.

Again, I know it’s very early to draw any conclusions. But Virgin must think they have some serious work to do. As their Twitter feed admitted: “we need to find more time…”

FP2 is at noon UK time, so we’ll know more after that. Perhaps.

UPDATE

The gap between Lotus and Virgin was smaller after FP2. Kovalainen for Lotus remained top of the new teams, 3.3 seconds off the session’s fastest time, and 0.7 seconds back from Alguersuari – similar to this morning. Top Virgin was di Grassi again, but an improved 1.6 seconds down on Kovalainen. The HRTs were back at the back, but not by much.