Austria FP1: Hamilton heads Bottas as the rest chase

The World Champions and World Championship leader posted the best time of 1:04.839 was a tenth faster than his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas who was second at the end of the 90 minutes morning session.

Despite a spin, Max Verstappen showed handy pace in the Red Bull, at the team's home race, to claim third place and a couple 0f tenths shy of the top time. His teammate Daniel Ricciardo was a further three tenths down in fifth place.

The Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel split the blue cars on the timing screens in fourth, three tenths down on Hamilton's benchmark lap time, with Kimi Raikkonen sixth in the other red car albeit a second shy of the top time.

Best of the Rest, in seventh, was the Haas of Romain Grosjean with the next dozen drivers separated by less than a second, followed by the Force India of Esteban Ocon in seventh, the Sauber of Charles Leclerc in ninth and the Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly rounding out the top ten, from which Renault and McLaren were absent.

Robert Kubica was in action for Williams in place of Sergey Sirotkin, the Pole ended the session last and 2.5 seconds off the pace as he seeks to provide solutions to help left the Grove outfit from the doldrums but the team are adamant that his objectives in the morning session did not include qualifying style hot-laps.

Mercedes chief summed up FP1 from his team's perspective, "It's pretty tight at the front, there's not much difference between the cars, but it was a good start for us. After having an engine upgrade in France, we had a major chassis upgrade and everything seems to be working so far."

"The car looks pretty good and you can see that on the on-boards. There is great stability in the car and an easyness to drive, now we have to carry this through the weekend," added Wolff whose team is targeting a fifth consecutive victory at Red Bull Ring.