Vettel Fastest in FP1 at Bahrain ahead of Red Bulls

Ferrari are showing their pace at Bahrain after Vettel posts the fastest time ahead of the Red Bull pair of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo.

The report from Autisport is below.

Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel topped the first Formula 1 free practice session for the 2017 Bahrain Grand Prix.

While Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was slowest after stopping on his seventh lap with smoke coming out of the rear of the car thanks to a problem the team suspected was related to high engine temperature, Vettel had no such trouble.

Vettel's best time of 1m32.697s, set with 31 minutes of the session remaining, was enough to guarantee top spot by four-tenths of a second ahead of Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo.

During the early running with each driver using their first set of tyres, which can only be used during the first 40 minutes, Valtteri Bottas was fastest for Mercedes after setting a time of 1m35.002s.

That put him 1.077s faster than Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz Jr, as the pair were the only drivers to opt for the soft Pirellis for their first sets.

For the full report visit autosport.com.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/128962/vettel-leads-red-bulls-in-bahrain-fp1

Images courtesy of Autosport.