Lewis Hamilton narrowly beat Sebastian Vettel to the top of the timesheets in opening practice for the Mexican Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver set the pace in the first 90-minute session of the day at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, putting in a 1m20.914 mid-way through the session on the medium tyre.
Vettel finished less than a tenth further back on the soft tyre, with Kimi Raikkonen improving to third late in FP1.
Force India showed strong performance at Sergio Perez’s home race, with the Mexican driver fourth and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg fifth on the super-softs.
Valtteri Bottas was sixth, with championship leader Nico Rosberg a quarter of a second down on Hamilton in seventh, also running the medium Pirelli compound.
Daniel Ricciardo ended FP1 in eighth, ahead of the second Williams of Felipe Massa. Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat completed the top 10.
Max Verstappen also lost track time after some overheating issues with his brakes during the session, which forced Red Bull to push his car into the garage.
The Dutch driver finished down in 14th place due to the limited number of laps completed, behind Romain Grosjean, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Marcus Ericsson.
There was a red flag mid-way through first practice after Felipe Nasr suffered a front wing failure on his Sauber, scattering debris across the circuit. He ended the session 17th.
Low grip levels caused several off-track excursions, including trips across the run-off areas for Kevin Magnussen and Pascal Wehrlein.
