Sebastian Vettel headed team-mate Kimi Raikkonen during first practice for the Spanish Grand Prix as Ferrari was the only team to run the soft tyres.

It was the two Mercedes drivers who set the pace early on as Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton completed the early laps on medium tyres, before Ferrari opted to use one of its eight sets of soft tyres in the first session. Raikkonen went over three quarters of a second clear halfway through FP1 before Vettel posted a 1:23.951 to beat his team-mate by 0.138s.

Rosberg improved on the medium tyre later in the session but was still half a second adrift, with Hamilton 0.16s further back. While not running on the same tyres as Ferrari made it hard to make a representative comparison, Mercedes was over 0.8s clear of the two Red Bull's in fifth and sixth.

Daniel Ricciardo was fifth ahead of new team-mate Max Verstappen, who enjoyed an encouraging start to life at Red Bull by getting within 0.2s of Ricciardo's time.

Daniil Kvyat had a less smooth start to his second stint at Toro Rosso, being pictures calling for adjustments to his seat after his early runs and ending the session in 12th, half a second adrift of Carlos Sainz.

Sainz was eighth fastest and also half a second behind Verstappen, with Valtteri Bottas splitting the two former team-mates. The second Williams of Felipe Massa was ninth quickest despite a spin at Turn 5 - a corner where he struggled later in the session too - while Fernando Alonso rounded out the top ten for McLaren.

With the hard, medium and soft compounds nominated for this weekend's race, no team has more than one set of hards set aside to be used before the race itself, with one set mandatory to be available on Sunday. Force India was the only team to complete all of its running on the hard compound tyre as it evaluated an upgrade, though it lost a lot of running when Sergio Perez suffered an oil leak and managed just nine laps in total.

Esteban Ocon's first FP1 outing of the season was a disappointment for the Renault youngster as he completed just six laps. Ocon was called back to the pits with a puncture after four laps and despite rejoining later in the sessions Renault had to end his running early.

Drivers react to Red Bull seat swap

Romain Grosjean column: Spain will show the real Haas

Chris Medland's 2016 Spanish Grand Prix preview

Technical focus: Halo or Aeroscreen?

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Pos Driver Team Time Laps
01 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:23.951 22
02 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:24.089 18
03 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:24.454 34
04 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:24.611 33
05 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1:25.416 25
06 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:25.585 29
07 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:25.672 36
08 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso 1:26.078 19
09 Felipe Massa Williams 1:26.186 32
10 Fernando Alonso McLaren 1:26.243 18
11 Kevin Magnussen Renault 1:26.576 30
12 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:26.583 21
13 Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1:26.938 27
14 Sergio Perez Force India 1:27.064 9
15 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1:27.253 27
16 Romain Grosjean Haas 1:27.258 17
17 Esteban Gutierrez Haas 1:27.283 18
18 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:27.392 24
19 Jenson Button McLaren 1:27.610 19
20 Pascal Wehrlein Manor 1:28.084 29
21 Rio Haryanto Manor 1:29.052 34
22 Esteban Ocon Renault 6
Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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