Hamilton tops opening day in Brazil

2017 F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets in both free practice sessions on Friday at the famous Interlagos Circuit.

After breaking the track record in the opening ninety minute free practice session of the day the Mercedes driver went on to improve his time even further with a 1:09.515 in FP2, but was only .048 head of his recedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, who finished second overall.

"We had quite a big programme this morning looking at some development items for 2018. We had been putting off that work while we were still fighting for the championships, so it was very good to get that done,” said Mercedes' Andrew Shovlin. “We have collected a lot of good data from those tests which will all feed into the development programme for the W09.”

“The weather forecast looked like we might lose some running with the rain today but it was great that it stayed dry. It was really good to get some long run work done in the hot conditions both in FP1 and FP2 as it looks like we will have similar track conditions on Sunday."

"Overall, the cars are working well but it's been tricky today in the windy conditions and both drivers struggled to put their lap together on the super-softs. There are a few areas that we need to work to improve the car but it's been a solid start to the weekend and we're looking forward to a good fight with the Red Bulls and Ferraris.”

Daniel Ricciardo was best of the rest with P3, two tenths down on Hamilton's time, however he will be facing a ten place grid drop due to an engine change for Sunday's race. Meanwhile Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel was fourth overall a further tenth back and Mexico race winner Max Verstappen was fifth fastest with Kimi Raikkonen rounding out the top six.