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Bottas leads first practice at Macau

Valtteri Bottas was fastest in a crash-filled first practice session for the Macau Grand Prix - but there was only 0.010 seconds separating him from his nearest rival, last year's winner Edoardo Mortara

With track conditions very slippery for the opening action of the end-of-season blue-riband F3 race, Bottas slowly dialled himself in as he got used to his new Prema Powerteam outfit.

With laptimes steadily improving throughout the session, Bottas moved to the top of the timesheet with 10 minutes remaining - shortly before practice was brought to a premature halt when Signature's Daniel Abt crashed into the barriers at R Bend.

Bottas said: "I took things pretty easy as it was just a case of getting used to the car and rebuilding my confidence at the track. I'm happy with how we have started."

Mortara, who is hoping to become the first man to win the F3 Grand Prix for a second time, said track conditions were very tricky.

"The circuit was very dirty with very little grip, so there is no surprise that a few drivers hit trouble," said the Signature driver. "As the surface rubbers in, it is going to get a lot quicker, so we cannot read too much into the times just yet."

Behind Mortara, his team-mate Laurens Vanthoor was third fastest with Prema's Roberto Merhi fourth, having topped the times mid-way through the session.

Abt was not the only driver to hit trouble during the practice session. Will Buller ran down an escape road at Moorish Hill, while Michael Ho had a spin at Police Bend before briefly running off track at Lisboa shortly afterwards. Felix Rosenqvist and Rio Haryanto hit the barriers at Lisboa too.

Kimiya Sato caused the first red flag of the session after 17 minutes when he crashed heavily into the barriers at R Bend, badly damaging the left-hand side of his car.

Results to follow


Pos Driver                   Team              Time      Laps
 1. Valtteri Bottas          Prema             2m14.578     8
 2. Edoardo Mortara          Signature         2m14.588    11
 3. Laurens Vanthoor         Signature         2m15.345    10
 4. Roberto Merhi            Prema             2m15.383    10
 5. Carlos Huertas           Hitech            2m15.775    11
 6. Renger van der Zande     Motopark          2m16.153     8
 7. Daniel Abt               Signature         2m16.243    11
 8. Yuji Kunimoto            TOM's             2m16.332    12
 9. Marco Wittmann           Signature         2m16.636    11
10. Daniel Juncadella        Prema             2m16.661    11
11. James Calado             Carlin            2m16.907    11
12. Felipe Nasr              Raikkonen         2m17.208    12
13. Alexandre Imperatori     Toda              2m17.396    11
14. Jean-Eric Vergne         Carlin            2m18.295    11
15. Will Buller              Fortec            2m18.423     8
16. Jazeman Jaafar           Carlin            2m18.456    11
17. Rio Haryanto             Raikkonen         2m18.918    10
18. Antonio da Costa         Carlin            2m19.082    10
19. Oliver Webb              Fortec            2m19.885    11
20. Rafael Suzuki            TOM's             2m21.363    11
21. Hideki Yamauchi          Hanashima         2m21.833     7
22. Michael Ho               Raikkonen         2m22.057     7
23. Alexander Sims           Raikkonen         2m22.460     5
24. Kimiya Sato              Motopark          2m22.473     4
25. Lucas Foresti            Fortec            2m22.572    11
26. Hywel Lloyd              CR/Manor          2m22.878    10
27. Adderly Fong             Sino Vision       2m22.919    10
28. Yuhi Sekiguchi           Three Bond        no time      6
29. Felix Rosenqvist         Performance       no time      2
30. Carlos Munoz             Hitech            no time      1

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