Ferrari set early pace at Barcelona

F1 Grand Prix, GP Spain, Circuit de Catalunya

Ferrari set the early pace in first practice at Barcelona as Sebastian Vettel was little more than a tenth quicker than his team mate Kimi Raikkonen. The duo were around half a second faster than Nico Rosberg, the first of the two Mercedes.

Both Ferrari's however set their best times on the soft tyres, whereas Mercedes did not yet fit those, instead opting to complete the entire session on the medium compound.

Behind Lewis Hamilton in fourth were both Red Bulls, with Ricciardo a tenth ahead of his new Dutch team mate, Max Verstappen. Carlos Sainz in the Toro Rosso meanwhile split the Williams cars and left his own new team mate, Daniil Kvyat, behind by half a second.

All in all, it proved a fairly clean session with few off-track moments. Lewis Hamilton also had a trouble free morning, thanks to a new MGU-H on his car on the back of technical issues at Russia and China.

Somewhat out of position was Jenson Button. The McLaren driver was complaining about handling problems and ended up 19th, more than 1.5s down on team mate Alonso who managed to get into the top 10 with the largely revised McLaren Honda MP4-31.