Formula One championship leader Lewis Hamilton laid down a marker on Friday after leading title-rival teammate Nico Rosberg in a familiar Mercedes GP one-two in the first practice for the US Formula One Grand Prix at Austin, Texas.
The Briton, chasing his fifth win in succession and 10th of the season, lapped with a best time of one minute, 39.941 seconds on a gusty but bright morning at the undulating Circuit of the Americas.
Rosberg was 0.292 seconds slower than the 2008 world champion, with McLaren’s Jenson Button third fastest in a session of just 18 cars after Caterham and Marussia went into administration and failed to make the journey to North America.
Hamilton leads Rosberg by 17 points with 100 still to be won, thanks to double points in the Abu Dhabi finale, in the three races remaining.
Mercedes have already wrapped up the constructors’ title and Sunday can equal McLaren’s 1988 record for one-two team finishes, set by Alain Prost and the late Ayrton Senna.
There were only 16 races back then, compared to 19 now.
Toro Rosso’s Russian rookie Daniil Kvyat, who graduates to the main Red Bull team next year in place of departing four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, was fourth fastest ahead of Denmark’s Kevin Magnussen in the other McLaren.
Vettel is set to start Sunday’s race from the pit lane after exceeding his allocation of power units, and the talk before the race was that he would skip qualifying today to save the engine.
Red Bull principal Christian Horner assured fans that the German, who was seventh fastest on Friday morning, would be appearing.
“We’ll certainly be taking part in qualifying,” he told the BBC. “But we have to be very careful with our mileage, he has to get through three race weekends with this unit.”
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, still keeping everyone guessing about his future, was sixth fastest. The session ended with drivers trialling a new “virtual safety car” system, being tested as a means of reducing speeds electronically across the field when yellow flags are waved without introducing the real vehicle.
The system is being looked at following Frenchman Jules Bianchi’s horrific Japanese Grand Prix accident.
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