Daniel Ricciardo was quickest in the first practice session for this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix, leading a Red Bull 1-2 around the streets of the principality. On the one day of the year when F1 cars run on a thursday for a competitive session the Red Bull team dominated the top of the time sheets for most of the day, and could be looking only their second win of the season this weekend to reassert themselves in the championship battle.
Behind them were the usual rest of the top six cars with Hamilton, Vettel and Raikkonen placing third to fifth respectively with Bottas only one place behind the group in seventh but with everyone of the top cars seemingly in a good position to take the win come Sunday.
Renault's Carlos Sainz was the one car to disrupt the top six managing to squeeze out Valtteri Bottas, (who did not set a competitive lap time on the new hyper soft tyres) and will be looking to continue his form from last time out in Spain where he outqualified and outraced teammate Nico Hulkenberg for the first time this season.
It was a better day for the two none works Mercedes teams, with Sergio Perez up in eighth on the timesheets and Sergey Sirotkin an impressive tenth and will surely the Russian will be looking to continue this speed throughout the weekend to potentially get his first F1 points after a disappointing debut season thus far.
It was a mixed day for both McLaren and Haas, who both had one car fail to set any significant amount of laps, with McLaren's Fernando Alonso having a brake-by-wire issue and Haas' Kevin Magnussen hit by engine cars, and left both drivers with work to do to get up to speed at the infamous street circuit.
Sam Gale
Local time
Local time
Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
Replies (1)
Login to replycalle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Hartley is looking pretty strong here.