Valtteri Bottas tops opening day at Silverstone

Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas topped the timesheets at the end of the first windy day of play at the Silverstone circuit in England, the Austrian GP winner edging out his British teammate by a mere four hundredths of a session to give the Brackley based squad a positive start to their home race weekend. He also smashed the all time lap record with a best time of 1:28.496.

“We've had a really promising start to the weekend, with both cars working well on the three different tyre compounds, as well as showing good pace on both low and high fuel,” explained Mercedes man James Allison. “We worked through our programme successfully and now our focus turns to making sure we're in the best possible place to compete on Saturday and Sunday. A good start though overall.”

Third and fourth in session two, were exactly the same as well when at the end of the day Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen had the edge over his German teammate, Sebastian Vettel, who finished the session in fourth place. Vettel tried out the new Shield Protection System in the opening ninety minute free practice session and seemed to be having difficulty getting in and out of the car while it was in place.

Fifth and sixth were the two Red Bull racers of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo with the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg the best of the rest with a P7 finish. His teammate however, was down in 18^th place in front of his home fans, making it somwwhat mixed day for the French based team.

“A slightly mixed afternoon for us,” said Renault's Bob Bell. “Nico got in the running he needed to do and we got the information we needed on the tyres for the race. He set a good time on low fuel, which we hope we can reproduce in qualifying. We're pleased with that and the progress we've made. Jo had a slightly less fortunate day with his clutch problem in the afternoon, on top of the mechanical issue in the morning, and never got a fair crack at a time. Overall for the team, I think we have had a productive day and look forward to qualifying tomorrow.”

Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon rounded out the top the for the day.