Bottas arrived in Barcelona having to rubbish reports about his future at Mercedes but made the perfect start to the weekend and sent a message to his critics by topping the FP1 timesheets. The Finn’s best lap - a 1m18.504s - saw him pip Verstappen to the quickest time, although the Dutchman appeared to leave time on the table in a far from ideal run on the Soft tyres. Verstappen aborted his first effort having encountered traffic and then ran wide at Turn 10 on his second timed run, but was still able to get within 0.033s of Bottas’ benchmark. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who is going for a fifth successive Spanish GP win, was a tenth further behind in the second...
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