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Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes 1-2 in first practice ahead of Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix with the three-time champion finishing a second clear of championship leader Sebastian Vettel who finished third behind Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton set a best lap of 1:21.537s on the supersoft compound Pirelli tyres to finish 0.435 seconds ahead of Bottas, with Vettel 1.115s off the pace. With the session starting under heavily overcast skies, drivers quickly set about their preparations and after half and hour Bottas was in charge on soft tyres, with the Finn inRead More

Kimi Räikkönen set the quickest lap of opening practice for the Belgian Grand Prix, the Finn edging title contender Lewis Hamilton by five hundredths of a second. Räikkönen, who earlier this weekend was handed a new contract with Ferrari for the 2018 season, set a lap of 1:45.502  to beat Hamilton by 0.053s, though the Finn had to bolt on a set of ultrasoft Pirelli tyres to shade Hamilton, whose best time was set on the soft compound tyre on offer this weekend. Räikkönen’s championship-leading team-mate Sebastian Vettel was thirdRead More

Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo set the quickest time of the opening practice session for the Hungarian outpacing Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen by just over two tenths of a second. The Australian, who was at the wheel of a much updated RB13, set a best time of 1:18.486s on the supersoft Pirelli tyres. Raikkonen was 0.234 behind the Azerbaijan Grand Prix winner, with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton a tenth of a second further back in third place. Ricciardo’s P1 time was just 0.05 seconds off the fastest ever lap of the circuitRead More

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest-ever lap of the Red Bull Ring as he powered into early command of practice for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. Until this morning Hamilton’s own 2016 Q2 lap of 1:06.228 had stood as the marker for quickest lap on the Styrian track but the three-time championship brushed past that time in the second half of this morning’s opening practice session at the Spielberg circuit, lapping in 1:05.975 on the soft tyres, the hardest of the three compounds on offer this weekend. Hamilton’s soft-tyre time wasRead More

Max Verstappen went quickest as practice got underway for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Dutchman headed Red Bull Racing team team-mate Daniel Ricciardo by almost half a second, with Sebastian Vettel third for Ferrari. The bulk of the session was run on Pirelli’s soft tyres with Lewis Hamiolton1:44.410s using super-soft Pirellis and ended the session 0.470 seconds seconds clear of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel a tenth further back in third. Most of the field headed out on the soft tyres early on, with Lewis Hamilton setting theRead More

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of opening practice for the Canadian Grand Prix, beating Formula One Drivers’ Championship leader Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari by two tenths of a second. Hamilton set a best time of 1:13.809s in the second half of the session after switching to Pirelli’s ultra-soft tyres. The Mercedes driver’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas was third quickest, just four hundredths of a second behind Vettel. Kimi Raikkonen was fourth in the second Ferrari and the top five order was rounded out by Force India’s Sergio Perez. TheRead More

Lewis Hamilton set the quickest time of opening practice in Monaco, beating Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel by almost two tenths of a second. The Mercedes driver also eclipsed last year’s pole position time by a similar margin and beat his own lap record in the principality by 4.5s. Hamilton recorded a time of 1:13.425 on Pirelli’s ultrasoft tyres to finish 0.196 seconds clear of Vettel, with Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen third, 0.15s adrift of the Drivers’ Championship-leading German. The opening 90-minute session saw a number of drivers quickly try outRead More

Mercedes set the pace in the opening session of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, with the three-time champion finishing almost a second clear of third-placed Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari. Defending Constructors’ champions Mercedes have brought a heavily revised car to the first of the 2017 season’s traditional European races and at the end of the first session the gap to the team’s rivals at the end of the first session was significant, with Räikkönen finishing 0.935s adrift of second-placed Valtteri Bottas. Sebastian Vettel was fourth for Ferrari, just overRead More

Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen set the pace in the opening practice session for this weekend’s Russian Grand Prix, beating Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas by 0.045 at the Sochi Autodrom. Bottas’ team-mate Lewis Hamilton was third, more than half a second off the pace. After running on soft tyres early on, Räikkönen’s time of 1:36.074 came midway through the session, with the Finn bolting on a set of supersofts to better the earlier efforts of the Mercedes drivers on the same compounds. Hamilton had made the early running but it was Bottas whoRead More

Lewis Hamilton went quickest in the first practice session of the new Formula One campaign, finishing more than half a second clear of new team-mate Valtteri Bottas at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. The three-time world champion ended the session at Melbourne’s Albert Park Circuit with a best time of 1:24.220, set on ultrasoft tyres, to beat Bottas, who moved to Mercedes from Williams at the start of this year, by 0.583 seconds. Apart from the Mercedes pairing, no other driver ran with the purple-banded Pirelli tyres during the sessionRead More