Mercedes dominates opening practice in Barcelona

It didn't take long for Aldo Costa to make the Mercedes cars faster than the Ferraris. Whereas the Ferraris were faster at this track in preseason testing, Mercedes brought significant Costa upgrades to Barcelona for the Spanish GP and Mercedes blew the Ferraris out of the water in opening practice.

Lewis Hamilton beat his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas by just 0.029s to lead FP1. More importantly they were a second faster than the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel.

The Red Bull row (row 3) was led by Max Verstappen over Daniel Ricciardo.

The biggest surprise were the Haas Ferrari occupying the 4th row, but Magnussen – running the team’s only current allocation of new parts – went off the road late in the session after an apparent gearbox issue.

Sergey Sirotkin, standing in for Jolyon Palmer at Renault, and home favourite Fernando Alonso also hit technical trouble, the latter just three corners into his first lap of the day when his Honda-powered McLaren spun to a smoky halt.

The only other Spaniard in the field, Carlos Sainz Jr., rounded out the top ten in his Toro Rosso, finishing just behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault.

Results

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	TIME	GAP	LAPS	ROW
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	1:21.521	+0.000s	28	Mercedes Row
2	77	Valtteri Bottas	MERCEDES	1:21.550	+0.029s	30	Mercedes Row
3	7	Kimi Raikkonen	FERRARI	1:22.456	+0.935s	24	Ferrari Row
4	5	Sebastian Vettel	FERRARI	1:22.600	+1.079s	23	Ferrari Row
5	33	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING	1:22.706	+1.185s	22	Red Bull Row
6	3	Daniel Ricciardo	RED BULL RACING	1:23.084	+1.563s	17	Red Bull Row
7	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	1:23.670	+2.149s	22	Haas Row
8	8	Romain Grosjean	HAAS FERRARI	1:23.758	+2.237s	23	Haas Row
9	27	Nico Hulkenberg	RENAULT	1:23.993	+2.472s	24
10	55	Carlos Sainz	TORO ROSSO	1:24.004	+2.483s	21
11	11	Sergio Perez	FORCE INDIA MERCEDES	1:24.188	+2.667s	23	Force India Row
12	31	Esteban Ocon	FORCE INDIA MERCEDES	1:24.324	+2.803s	22	Force India Row
13	2	Stoffel Vandoorne	MCLAREN HONDA	1:24.400	+2.879s	24
14	19	Felipe Massa	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:24.618	+3.097s	34
15	26	Daniil Kvyat	TORO ROSSO	1:24.642	+3.121s	18
16	9	Marcus Ericsson	SAUBER FERRARI	1:24.966	+3.445s	23	Sauber Row
17	94	Pascal Wehrlein	SAUBER FERRARI	1:25.182	+3.661s	24	Sauber Row
18	18	Lance Stroll	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:25.919	+4.398s	34
19	46	Sergey Sirotkin	RENAULT	1:26.293	+4.772s	10
20	14	Fernando Alonso	MCLAREN HONDA	No Time	No Time	1