Lewis Hamilton was fastest in the first practice session ahead of this weekend\u2019s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The reigning world champion was three tenths faster than team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg at a race he need a good result and bad luck for Rosberg to take his fourth title.<\/p>\n
The Mercedes duo appear to as expected have the sight over the rest of the field with Red Bull ahead of Ferrari. Mercedes and Red bull are expected to have the edge this weekend as there are elemets of the circuit which plays to their strengths.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo look strong as they managed to be within half a second of Hamilton. However, the eyes of the world is on the Mercedes, as there drivers prepare to fight for the title. The two Mercedes and Red Bull\u2019s set there fastest times on the soft tyres, but didn\u2019t do a fast run late on th ultrasoft.<\/p>\n
Rosberg did do a run on the ultrasoft earlier on, but his time was bettered by Hamilton\u2019s run on the slower soft tyre. Sebastian Vettel was fifth but Ferrari are expected to struggle because of the street-styled layout of the circuit because they have been out performed on these circuits all season.<\/p>\n
Kimi Raikkonen was seventh fastest, after a good run from the Force India of Sergio Perez. But the Mexican\u2019s best time isn\u2019t that reprehensive as he was running on a different compound of tyre.\u00a0 Carlos Sainz was eighth fastest, but it was a difficult session for team-mate Daniil Kvyat after his Toro Rosso had a problem before he set a lap, forcing him to stop before he set a time.<\/p>\n
Also having problems were the Haas\u2019s as both Romain Grosjean and Esteban Guti\u00e9rrez had offs the Frenchman complained about his stability of his car and issues breaking. The McLaren\u2019s of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button were also struggling with technical issues.<\/p>\n
Guti\u00e9rrez was fourteenth, ahead of both of the Williams who regularly hide their true pace on Friday\u2019s and the Renaults with Jolyon Palmer seventeenth Kevin Magnussen eighteenth. But for McLaren they were well of there recent form down behind the Renaults and Pascal Wehrlein in between them, Jenson Button was twentieth however he only managed ten\u00a0laps after what looked like a power issue mid-way through the session.<\/p>\n
Any hopes that Jordan King may have had after GP2 Practice of putting in a good session after going seventh for Racing Engineering saw his F1 session end twenty first after losing his car into turn five.<\/p>\n
RELATED<\/strong><\/p>\n Lewis Hamilton was fastest in the first practice session ahead of this weekend\u2019s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The reigning world champion was three tenths faster than team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg at a race he need a good result and bad luck for Rosberg to take his fourth title. The Mercedes duo appear to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[42,63,64,65,368,493,496,646,647,699,700,707,709,741,882,885,1031,1068,1075,1115,1208,1209,1227,1283,1287,1289,1298,1422,1424,1495,1637,1642,1656,1707,1766,1770,1773,1791,1808,1843,2025,2149,2152,2173,2176],"class_list":["post-2967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-42","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-gp","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-carlos-sainz","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-daniil-kvyat","tag-esteban-gutierrez","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-felipe-massa","tag-felipe-nasr","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-ferrari","tag-force-india","tag-haas","tag-haas-ferrari","tag-jenson-button","tag-jolyon-palmer","tag-jordan-king","tag-kimi-raikkonen","tag-manor","tag-manor-mercedes","tag-marcus-ericsson","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-honda","tag-mercedes","tag-nico-hulkenberg","tag-nico-rosberg","tag-pascal-wehrlein","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-renault","tag-romain-grosjean","tag-sao-paulo","tag-sauber","tag-sauber-ferrari","tag-sebastian-vettel","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-toro-rosso","tag-williams","tag-williams-mercedes","tag-yas-island","tag-yas-marina-curcuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n