Barcelona: Bottas puts Mercedes on top in practice 1

Bottas beats the two Ferraris

Valtteri Bottas beat the two Ferraris to set the pace in opening Spanish Grand Prix practice but was hit with an oil leak late. He was the only driver in the 1m17s bracket.

The Mercedes driver traded times with Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel before establishing himself at the head of the order with two laps good enough to end the session quickest.

With both Mercedes and Ferrari running heavily updated cars this weekend as the ‘European season’ begins, it was the Silver Arrows who used their upgrades to best effect on Friday morning, although Bottas’ advantage over Vettel was a mere 0.115s. And his happiness at being fastest would have been checked by a suspected hydraulic leak on his car that saw him stuck in the garage for the final part of the session.

After a fairly smooth 89 minutes of running, meanwhile, Lance Stroll brought out the red flags when a big snap of oversteer caused him to run off the circuit at Turn 9, his Racing Point RP19 burying itself into the trackside barriers. He emerged unscathed, having set the 13th fastest time of the session.

Behind the top two, Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finished third, a tenth off Vettel’s pace, while a sandbagging Lewis Hamilton was fourth and six-tenths adrift of Bottas’ time in the second Mercedes, the Briton appearing dissatisfied with his ability to get his Pirelli tires in the zone.

New engine for Renault

Renault has brought a new power unit to this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix as it looks to iron out reliability woes that have hampered it so far in 2019.

Although there were no major concerns last time out in Baku, the opening three races saw Renault suffer from power unit problems, which affected McLaren as well as the works team.
In Bahrain, Renault was on for a double points finish before both cars broke down at almost the same time late on in the race.

Daniel Ricciardo has confirmed that Renault has arrived in Barcelona with a "pretty big" upgrade package that includes a modified power unit.

“It’s mainly for reliability," he said. “I don’t know how much detail they’ve gone into, or what parts have changed.

“Some materials, I know what they are but I don’t know how much I can obviously say, but some materials have changed to help reliability. So, for now, that’s the target."

Renault has previously introduced a new MGU-K after it failed twice at the opening two races of the year.

Ricciardo is hopeful that now it has introduced an upgrade in order to aid its reliability, it can shift its focus back to improving its pace after a lackluster start to the season.

“Obviously we’ll see that it’s more reliable, then we can start again pushing the power curve and all those other things that everyone does in qualifying and all that."

Practice 1 Times