Ricciardo leads start of 2018 F1 testing, Alonso crashes

Daniel Ricciardo has set the fastest time on the opening morning of 2018 Formula 1 pre-season testing while Fernando Alonso and McLaren suffered a tricky start after an early crash.

Haas, Toro Rosso and Haas provided an early start to the first day of testing by officially presenting their respective 2018 F1 challengers before the beginning of track action, which was delayed by 10 minutes, heralding the start of the new F1 season.

As all 10 teams go up to speed it was McLaren who triggered the first red flag stoppage after Alonso suffered a broken wheel nut on his right-rear tyre sending him into a spin in the gravel at the final turn on just his seventh lap of the day.

The crash saw the Woking-based team, starting its new Renault engine partnership this year, miss over three hours of track time but did return to running with 15 minutes before the lunch break to notch up 10 laps in the morning session.

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen led the times at midday but Mercedes made the most of the added 10 minutes to jump top with a 1m 20.349s – 0.157s faster than his fellow countryman – only to see Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo jump ahead to set a new fastest lap of 1m 20.179s in the closing minutes to steal the headlines.

With Bottas second quickest and Raikkonen shuffled down to third, Renault and Nico Hulkenberg grabbed attention with a rate of impressive times to take fourth place on the timesheet.

Toro Rosso enjoyed a strong start to its partnership with Honda after completing the second-most laps of any team - 71 laps - to pull off a complete contrast to its recent testing form in F1 during its alliance with McLaren.

Lance Stroll produced a solid start to his 2018 F1 season with Williams with 46 untroubled laps completed with the FW41, with a similar story at Haas for Romain Grosjean with 32 laps completed.

Just behind McLaren’s best time Marcus Ericsson debuted the new-look Alfa Romeo Sauber with 37 laps of consistent running adapting to the 2018-specificaiton Ferrari engines.

Midway through the morning session Force India caused a second red flag stoppage after development driver Nikita Mazepin was forced to stop on track at turn 4 with a technical issue having completed 22 laps.