Ferrari sets the pace on soft tyres in FP1

Sebastian Vettel headed team-mate Kimi Raikkonen during first practice for the Spanish Grand Prix as Ferrari was the only team to run the soft tyres.

It was the two Mercedes drivers who set the pace early on as Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton completed the early laps on medium tyres, before Ferrari opted to use one of its eight sets of soft tyres in the first session. Raikkonen went over three quarters of a second clear halfway through FP1 before Vettel posted a 1:23.951 to beat his team-mate by 0.138s.

Rosberg improved on the medium tyre later in the session but was still half a second adrift, with Hamilton 0.16s further back. While not running on the same tyres as Ferrari made it hard to make a representative comparison, Mercedes was over 0.8s clear of the two Red Bull’s in fifth and sixth.

Daniel Ricciardo was fifth ahead of new team-mate Max Verstappen, who enjoyed an encouraging start to life at Red Bull by getting within 0.2s of Ricciardo’s time.

Daniil Kvyat had a less smooth start to his second stint at Toro Rosso, being pictures calling for adjustments to his seat after his early runs and ending the session in 12th, half a second adrift of Carlos Sainz.

Sainz was eighth fastest and also half a second behind Verstappen, with Valtteri Bottas splitting the two former team-mates. The second Williams of Felipe Massa was ninth quickest despite a spin at Turn 5 – a corner where he struggled later in the session too – while Fernando Alonso rounded out the top ten for McLaren.

With the hard, medium and soft compounds nominated for this weekend’s race, no team has more than one set of hards set aside to be used before the race itself, with one set mandatory to be available on Sunday. Force India was the only team to complete all of its running on the hard compound tyre as it evaluated an upgrade, though it lost a lot of running when Sergio Perez suffered an oil leak and managed just nine laps in total.

Esteban Ocon’s first FP1 outing of the season was a disappointment for the Renault youngster as he completed just six laps. Ocon was called back to the pits with a puncture after four laps and despite rejoining later in the sessions Renault had to end his running early.

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