By Rory Carroll
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Lewis Hamilton posted the fastest time in first practice at the Las Vegas Formula One Grand Prix on Thursday ahead of Mercedes team mate George Russell.
Seven-times world champion Hamilton had said he felt like walking away from Mercedes after finishing 10th in Sao Paulo, saying it had been “a disaster of a weekend” and the worst the car had ever been.
The Briton topped the timesheets in Las Vegas with a time of one minute, 35.001 seconds, 0.396 seconds ahead of Russell and 0.953 quicker than McLaren’s Lando Norris in cool, slippery conditions in the Nevada desert.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who won last year’s race and can claim a fourth successive championship in Saturday night’s race, was fifth, 1.037 second adrift of Hamilton’s time.
Valtteri Bottas was handed a five-place grid penalty for exceeding the limit of power unit components after starting practice with a new energy store.
The first practice session for the race along the transformed Las Vegas Strip was far more successful than last year when the session lasted a mere eight minutes before Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari was badly damaged by a loose drain cover.
(Reporting by Rory Carroll in Las Vegas; Additional reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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