Spanish GP: Hamilton fastest in FP1

Lewis Hamilton topped the opening practice session for this weekend's Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, as Fernando Alonso broke down on his first install lap out of the pits. 

Hamilton edged out Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas by 0.029s, with a 1:21.521 being the fastest lap of the session, already nearly 0.5s quicker than Hamilton's own pole time from the 2016 race. 

Kimi Raikkonen led a Ferrari 3-4 from Sebastian Vettel, but was nearly one second down on Hamilton's time, with the Finn the only non-Mercedes driver to be within a second of Hamilton. 

Red Bull closed the gap to the leading pair, but were still in fifth and sixth, Max Verstappen nearly 0.4s quicker than Daniel Ricciardo. 

Despite a late off at Turn 4, Kevin Magnussen was able to put the Haas into seventh, ahead of Romain Grosjean in the sister car, with Renault' s Nico Hulkenberg and Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz Jr rounding out the top 10. 

Alonso breaks down

After breaking down on the formation lap in Russia, Alonso was hoping for a trouble-free session to evaluate the new technical updates and get crucial mileage for Honda. 

Shifting through the gears on the exit of Turn 2, the engine detonated itself and surrounded the MCL32 in a cloud of smoke and steam, with oil leaking from underneath the car. Alonso then left the circuit to go and play tennis. 

The session then resumed, and immediately drivers were complaining of a lack of grip, owing to the hard compound tyre simply being too hard for the tarmac, with the switch to medium tyres taking place after the opening runs had been completed and the first 40 minutes of the 90 minute session had elapsed. 

Teams then settled into the familiar Friday morning rountine of fine-tuning set-up and trying to optimise their latest upgrade packages.

Reliability woes for Ferrari

Early on in the session, Vettel ground to halt on the pit-straight, telling the pit-wall over the radio that he believed the car had a gearbox problem as the marshals pushed the stricken SF70-H back into the pits for the team to try and rectify. 

In the end, he didn't lose too much running and the German completed a total of 23 laps, only one fewer than Raikkonen, whose only issue was running wide at the final chicane on a fast lap. 

Sergey Sirotkin was once again in the Renault, this time taking Jolyon Palmer's seat, and he completed 10 laps, before a water leak curtailed his running.