Formula 1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two in US Grand Prix opening practice despite limited running on a damp track.
After only completing an installation lap in the first half of the session, Hamilton was bottom of the timesheet having not set a representative time in the first 45-minutes.
During a four-lap intermediate tyre run in the second half of FP1, he vaulted to the top of the times with a 1m47.502s benchmark, eclipsing previous pacesetter and team-mate Valtteri Bottas by 1.304s.
Bottas lost significant time to Hamilton in the first and third sectors but also recorded low mileage with just seven laps clocked by the end of the session.
Hamilton enters this weekend with a chance to clinch his fifth drivers’ championship title. If he outscores rival Sebastian Vettel by eight points or more, Hamilton will be crowned.
Vettel ended FP1 in fifth place, as he suffered three separate off-track moments during the session. Outbraking himself twice at Turn 1, Vettel also took to the run-off area at the hairpin Turn 11.
He ended the morning 1.987s behind Hamilton, with the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo beating him into third and fourth.
Vettel’s Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen finished in sixth – albeit 0.5s behind the sister car – while Renault’s Carlos Sainz Jr occupied the best of the rest position in seventh.
Romain Grosjean ended the morning in eighth for Haas, ahead of the Sauber pairing of Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson who rounded out the top 10.
Leclerc indirectly triggered the session’s only red flag intervention. In the early stages of the session and with the track at its most treacherous, the Ferrari-bound Leclerc spun on the entrance to the uphill Turn 9.
Driving through the gravel trap in order to return to the track, he scooped significant gravel onto the circuit which required the deployment of COTA’s jet dryers in order to be cleared off-track.
Lando Norris, who deputised for Stoffel Vandoorne in FP1, was only 0.2s adrift of Fernando Alonso, with the McLaren pairing in 11th and 12th.
Toro Rosso provided more seat time to Formula 2 racer Sean Gelael, who replaced Brendon Hartley in the car. Gelael completed the most laps of any driver in the session with 21, but finished last on the timesheet.
