Free Practice 1 – Great Britain: Nico Rosberg breaks down but leads

For the start of the first practice session at Silverstone, the conditions are perfect: the air temperature is 18°C while the track is already at 30°C. A bright sun therefore welcomes the drivers and fans for the start of the action.

There are a few changes in the cars as Raffaele Marciello replaces Marcus Ericsson at Sauber, Susie Wolff takes over Valtteri Bottas’s spot, and Jolyon Palmer is again in Romain Grosjean’s seat.

As soon as the green light is given, the vast majority of drivers hit the track for their reconnaissance lap, but few do more than one or two laps on their first outing, on hard tires. The two Mercedes drivers are thus the last to take the track after ten minutes.

So it’s Nico Rosberg who is the first to set a timed lap at 1:38.638, before improving immediately to 1:35.875. This pushes others to also benchmark themselves over several laps. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, follows him at 1:38.146 while Felipe Nasr is still at 1:42 and Will Stevens at 1:44.

The first on-track incident involves the local hero, Lewis Hamilton, who loses control of his car coming out of a corner. His spin, however, has no consequences. Meanwhile, the Mercedes team asks Nico Rosberg to stop his car at the side of the track due to a hydraulic issue with his vehicle.

After twenty minutes, it’s Felipe Nasr’s turn to perform an improvised maneuver and Felipe Massa to take an off-track excursion. At McLaren, both drivers have completed just one lap and are now in the guests’ box… It seems the problems are not over for the Woking team.

Pastor Maldonado goes off track and informs his team that he thinks he has lost a gear. But his pit crew informs him that he can continue until he reaches the pit, where the mechanics will be able to fix the problem.

After half an hour, the top 10 is: Hamilton, Räikkönen, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Vettel, Hülkenberg, Sainz, Verstappen, Kvyat, Massa. The two McLarens are still at the back of the pack and have not reappeared after their installation lap. Conversely, Nico Rosberg’s car is already back in its garage, allowing his mechanics to repair it, with a possible return to the track by the end of the session. It’s interesting to see the German driver leaning over his teammate’s car to read the data displayed on the screen.

At Ferrari, the mechanics are also busy reinstalling new brakes on Kimi Räikkönen’s car, while all the other teams are making some adjustments to their cars before their next outing on the track.

After a 15-minute break, which saw all the cars at the back of their garages, Max Verstappen reignites the action by climbing to second position, still 7 tenths behind the leader. After one hour of the session, the top 10 has thus evolved to now be: Hamilton, Verstappen, Sainz, Räikkönen, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Hülkenberg, Vettel, Kvyat, while Fernando Alonso completed his first timed lap, 5.3 seconds behind Hamilton. This places him between Will Stevens and Roberto Mehri.

The mechanics of Kimi Räikkönen are now busy fixing a problem on his MGU-H while Lewis Hamilton improves his time to 1:34.344, putting him a full second ahead of everyone else. For his birthday, Sebastian Vettel will have driven little since he only completed about ten laps.

Nico Rosberg had the opportunity to return to the track in the final minutes of the session, thanks to the flawless execution of his gearbox replacement by his mechanics. On his first out lap, he immediately set the second-fastest time of the session but was eight-tenths behind his teammate. Jenson Button had to wait until the very end of the session to set his first timed lap. This placed him just ahead of the Manors and his teammate Fernando Alonso. However, Alonso improved on his last attempt to position himself ahead of Jenson Button.

In the last minute, Nico Rosberg sets the fastest time of the session, just one-hundredth ahead of his teammate, indicating that his car is once again fully operational. Immediately after, he improves again to extend his lead to seven-hundredths.

From our special correspondent in Silverstone