Lewis Hamilton launched Mercedes’ comeback this weekend with the fastest time for the first free practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix and the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Hamilton set a 1:13.809 to go fastest on the super soft tyres narrowly beating Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to the fastest time of the session by 0.198s. In fact, the top four drivers were covered by less than half a second.

As expected the green track conditions produced a few spins and off track excursions for the drivers. As the track cleaned up, the lap times became progressively quicker.

Valtteri Bottas finished the session third fastest ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

The surprise of the day came courtesy of Force India who finished in an impressive 5th and 6th with Sergio Perez finishing in front of Esteban Ocon.

Red Bull did not have the cleanest session with a few troubles for Max Verstappen out on track. Granted that the team only ran the super softs they’re still a few tenths off the pace. Team Principal Christian Horner said that on the super softs they were just over half a second off the pace and they expect to be between three and four-tenths off the pace on the ultra softs.

Felipe Massa ended his session 8th fastest with his team mate and home town boy Lance Stroll finishing in 13th with the latter complaining about the lack of grip on his Williams.

McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne had a good session compared to his team mate, Fernando Alonso. Alonso fresh from the back of his Indy 500 stint was keen to get back in the car but was confined to the garage with issues on his MCL32. When Alonso was able to get back out on track he could only complete one timed lap before a hydraulic problem forced him to stop on track.

Mercedes are showing some early pace. Ferrari look right in there with Force India the best of the rest. Free Practice 2 still to come. We could see things changed up a bit.

PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP1)@MercedesAMGF1 edge @ScuderiaFerrari @ForceIndiaF1 impress again#CanadianGP 🇨🇦 #FP1 pic.twitter.com/T6IDFPyjuE

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 9, 2017