Race favorite Lewis Hamilton set the pace for a dominant Mercedes team in first Spanish Grand Prix practice yesterday, while the pain remained the same for Sebastian Vettel despite a Red Bull chassis switch.
Hamilton’s fastest lap of 1 minute, 27.023 seconds, set six minutes from the end, was 0.868 seconds quicker than McLaren’s Jenson Button, who was best of the rest.
The impressive margin on a sunny morning at the Circuit de Catalunya further underlined the Briton’s status as the man to watch after three wins in a row.
Photo: EPA
Championship leader Nico Rosberg, who is four points clear of teammate Hamilton and had said on Thursday he just needed a “normal weekend” to regain momentum, suffered a cooling issue that cut short his session. He was fifth fastest.
Quadruple world champion Vettel, who had a miserable preseason test in Spain and has had a difficult four grand prix since then, started the first European race weekend of the year with another setback.
The German, winner of the past nine races, was using a different chassis to the one raced so far, but he completed just four laps before pulling over with an electrical problem.
Marshals handed him a fire extinguisher as he inspected the car before hitching a ride back to the paddock on a scooter.
“We had a full electrical shutdown on Seb’s car. We’re not sure what caused it. It cut the radio and everything,” team principal Christian Horner said.
Although the car was returned to the pits, the problem prevented Vettel from taking any further part in the morning session.
His Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who has outqualified Vettel in three of the four races and passed him in the past two after the German was instructed to let the faster car through, was the third fastest driver.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, the local favorite for his home race after winning last year with plenty of banners in the grandstand urging him on, was fourth on the timesheets.
In a bizarre early incident, a wing mirror on Sergio Perez’s Force India broke off and was left flapping around on a wire. The Mexican completed the lap with it in his hand.
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