Frenchman leads the way in Silverstone

Pierre Gasly has started his Silverstone weekend in fine form after topping the timesheets in this morning's Free Practice session at the fabled British circuit, leading the way from Sergey Sirotkin and Arthur Pic.

The Red Bull tester stopped the clocks at 1:39.890 a third of the way through the competitive session, taking advantage of the warmer conditions after practice commenced under ominously overcast conditions.

Pic was the first man to set a competitive time just five minutes into the session, and the floodgates were opened: Gasly, Jordan King, Alex Lynn, Pic and Sirotkin all claimed the top spot briefly, but at the fifteen minute mark Gasly set the time that would not be beaten before the majority of the field returned to the pits for their second set of tyres.

With the second half of the session used to work on race pace there was little chance of an improvement in times, and so it proved. A brief virtual safety car period broken up the session as the marshals moved quickly to remove Luca Ghiotto's halted Trident from Turn 3 at the thirty minute mark, but there was little else to concern the teams as the rest of the grid kept their powder dry ahead of this afternoon's Qualifying session.

Behind the top three Antonio Giovinazzi, Lynn, Norman Nato, Oliver Rowland, King, Nobuharu Matsushita and Artem Markelov were all within a second of the top time and will be looking to push forward in just a few hours time.