Bottas first in practice session
SAD ALONSO HINTS AT F1 EXIT
Mercedes, with Valtteri Bottas again quicker than reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton, led the way in first Spanish Grand Prix practice on Friday with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel the best of the rest.
Bottas put down a marker with a best lap of one minute 18.148 seconds on the soft tyre, 0.849 faster than his four-times champion team mate who won from pole last year.
Vettel, who will be chasing his fourth successive pole position on Saturday, was on the quicker supersofts but 0.950 slower than the Finn around a sunny but windy Circuit de Catalunya.
Hamilton leads the German, also a four-times world champion, by four points after four races.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was fourth fastest but Australian team mate Daniel Ricciardo crashed in his first track session since the two drivers collided in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix 12 days ago.
The virtual safety car was deployed briefly, with Ricciardo’s car running across the gravel and into the barriers, with several others also spinning. The Australian was classified seventh. Home hero Fernando Alonso started the weekend a moraleboosting sixth, behind Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, with his McLaren displaying a heavilyrevised three-pronged nose.
Williams had another trying session as Polish reserve Robert Kubica took part in a race weekend for the first time since 2010, three months before he suffered serious injuries in a rally crash.
The former race winner was 19th, in 1:21.510, but faster than teenage Canadian team mate Lance Stroll in last place on the timesheets with a best of 1:22.756 after an off into the gravel.
“Unbelievable how bad the balance is,” Stroll complained over the radio.
Kubica was replacing Russian rookie Sergey Sirotkin, who returns for second practice and the race but has a three-place grid penalty. Fernando Alonso bemoaned his lack of any real home advantage for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix and hinted that he may be considering a future without Formula One next year.
The two-time world champion, who has one win at the Circuit de Catalunya to his name, told reporters that he felt saddened by the current direction of F1 and would not decide his plans for 2019 until after this year’s European summer break in August. Talking ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, he suggested he was feeling the strain of his efforts to combine racing in different series. “I’m attempting two world championships at the same time,” he said, referring to F1 and the sports car world endurance championship, which includes the classic Le Mans 24-Hours race.
“I’m happy with the progress we did here at McLaren and the direction things are going -- so I’m happy here, but it’s quite demanding -- especially the F1 calendar.
“The biggest thing here is how predictable everything is. We can put in the paper now what would be the qualifying here on Saturday, what it would be in Monaco, what it would be in Silverstone. Meanwhile, the prospect of a F1 GP staged in Miami moved closer to reality after city officials gave their agreement in principle to staging a race in the city. A motion put before Miami’s City Commission was carried with unanimous support, paving the way for negotiations for the race, which could be held as early as 2019, to accelerate.
BARCELONA: BOTTAS WAS QUICKER THAN HAMILTON AND PUT DOWN A MARKER WITH A BEST LAP OF ONE MINUTE 18.148 SECONDS ON THE SOFT TYRES ON A WINDY DAY