Mercedes one-two in practice at Imola

Mercedes topped both practice sessions for the Emilia-romagna Grand Prix as Red Bull endured a torrid day on Friday. Red Bull was favored heading to Imola but fortunes swung in Mercedes’ favor as the reigning championship team managed a onetwo in both practices while its rival finished each session with just one driver. Valtteri Bottas was fastest in both, edging Lewis Hamilton by just .010 seconds in the second practice and .041 in the first. “The weekend has started in a positive way, I’m much happier with the balance of the car,” Bottas said. “The car feels better, we still have the same type of issues as in Bahrain but less so. “Still not perfect but we are only on event two out of 23 this season so hopefully we have time to fix it ... We still don’t think we are the fastest car and we really need to improve on that on Saturday.”

Pierre Gasly, who briefly separated the two Mercedes drivers, was .078 slower than Bottas in the second practice. It is his Alphatauri team’s home race, with its Faenza base located 15 kilometers from the track

“The team have worked really hard to try and understand what happened at the last race, where we were weak and how we could tweak the setup, but the track has come to our direction too,” Hamilton said.

“We have good pace but we have not seen the best from Red Bull yet because they have had messy sessions. It will be interesting to see tomorrow how quick they are.”

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, who looks set to be Hamilton’s closest rival this season, had a problem with his car early in the second practice and his session ended abruptly 10 minutes in. “It looks like the drive shaft has given away. We’re just trying to understand what has happened,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. —