Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton heads Rosberg for dominant Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of first practice for the Chinese Grand Prix as Mercedes dominated the opening session of the weekend.

Fresh from Ferrari's shock victory in Malaysia, Mercedes enjoyed a significant advantage over the rest of the field during FP1 in Shanghai. Hamilton struggled in the early part of the session but recovered to post a best time of 1:39.033 to lead team-mate Nico Rosberg by over half a second.

However, it was the gap back to Ferrari which was ominous as Hamilton headed Malaysian Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel by over 1.1s during the morning session. The two Ferraris had a small cushion over the rest of field in third and fourth, with Felipe Nasr fifth for Sauber but 0.8s slower than Vettel - who improved with his final lap - and nearly 0.4s off Kimi Raikkonen.

Felipe Massa had been set to improve late on and perhaps challenge Vettel and Raikkonen for the third best time, but the Brazilian locked the rears of his Williams braking for the hairpin and had a low speed spin on the outside of the corner.

Massa wasn't the only driver to have a spin on a track which was low on grip, with Jolyon Palmer also spinning exiting Turn 9 during his first Friday practice appearance for Lotus. Carlos Sainz Jr similarly spun at the first corner, while both Mercedes drivers also had off-track excursions, with Turn 1 and the hairpin at Turn 14 catching out a few cars.

The two Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat were sixth and seventh respectively, but were both two seconds off the pace. While the gaps at the top were big, Nasr in fifth place back to Palmer in 15th was less than one second.

Included in that pack was Jenson Button's McLaren, with both MP4-30s enjoying an encouraging start to the weekend. Button ended the session 13th, 0.9s away from Nasr in fifth and 2.8s off the overall pace. Fernando Alonso was down in 17th but had a spell in the garage towards the end of the session.

There was also improvement for Manor as both Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi ran on track at the same time in the final half hour of FP1, with the two drivers completing 38 laps between them.

By Chris Medland in Shanghai

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	L. Hamilton	Mercedes	1:39.033	21
02	N. Rosberg	Mercedes	1:39.574	21
03	S. Vettel	Ferrari	1:40.157	18
04	K. Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:40.661	27
05	F. Nasr	Sauber	1:41.012	18
06	D. Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:41.029	21
07	D. Kvyat	Red Bull	1:41.097	24
08	C. Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:41.112	23
09	V. Bottas	Williams	1:41.303	23
10	F. Massa	Williams	1:41.304	17
11	P. Maldonado	Lotus	1:41.335	23
12	M. Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:41.575	28
13	J. Button	McLaren	1:41.845	19
14	M. Ericsson	Sauber	1:41.918	24
15	J. Palmer	Lotus	1:41.967	25
16	S. Perez	Force India	1:42.141	22
17	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:42.161	20
18	N. Hulkenberg	Force India	1:42.184	19
19	W. Stevens	Manor	1:45.379	18
20	R. Merhi	Manor	1:44.443	20

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.