Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton tops early practice sessions

As the very first official practice sessions have come to a close, Lewis Hamilton has already flexed a certain level of dominance by finishing P1 in both Free Practice 1 and 2. It seems that there is still lots of pace for teams to find before qualifying, but Lewis' lap has topped the pole position lap time of last year set by Hamilton himself.

The pole lap of last year was a 1.23.837 compared to Hamilton's FP2 lap of a 1.23.620. Second fastest in FP2 was Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, nearly half a second slower than the Silver Arrows of Hamilton.

In third place was the brand new Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas who was slower than the German by only one hundredth of a second. Bottas had also placed second in FP1 to hia teammate in his first ever race weekend session with the Silver Arrows team, running 25 laps in the process.

The Red Bulls have also found themselves running in positions third through fifth between the two practice session with the native Australian Daniel Ricciardo leading the charge for Red Bull F1 Team.

Williams found themselves down the order in 14th and 18th during FP2 after enjoying moderate success in the first session.

Haas' Romain Grosjean has finished P8 in both practice sessions, proving some decent pace of the still very new American team.

For Renault's Jolyon Palmer, he found the barrier on the exit of the final corner while teammate Nico Hulkenberg set a 1.25.436 to secure a P9 finish in session 2.

The pink Force India also made its debut and has set a p11 lap from Sergio Perez and P13 from Esteban Ocon.

McLaren Honda has put down a considerable amount of laps with Fernando Alonso putting down a team best 1.26 flat for a P12 finish in FP2 on his 19 laps set. Teammate Stoffel Vandoorne finished FP2 in P17 with 33 laps run.