Everything you need to know as Mercedes sweeps F1 Vegas practices

Mercedes' impressive start to Formula 1's Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend continued with Lewis Hamilton completing a clean sweep of the Thursday night practice sessions.

Hamilton bettered his FP1 benchmark by 1.2 seconds to top FP2 on a 1m33.825s.

That was 0.011s quicker than the McLaren of Lando Norris and team-mate George Russell who rounded out the top three.

The ease with which Mercedes could deliver a laptime at Las Vegas caught the eye of McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.

He expects Mercedes to be in the mix for its first pole position since Silverstone, having struggled for form since the summer break.

Max Verstappen and Red Bull had a tricky day. Neither driver got a flying lap in on the soft tyres - which the whole top 10 used to set their fastest times - leaving Verstappen and Sergio Perez 17th and 19th on the leaderboard.

That was partly because of a red flag for Alex Albon's stricken Williams, but even the soft tyre lap Verstappen was on at the time of the red flag wasn't going to be quick enough for the top five.

Verstappen has his first chance to seal the 2024 F1 drivers' championship this weekend. There are many different permutations but the simplest way is to finish ahead of Norris on Saturday night.

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Ferrari drivers Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were fourth and fifth ahead of the Alpine of Pierre Gasly and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen.

Oscar Piastri was eighth for McLaren ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and RB's Yuki Tsunoda.

Albon only managed three laps before he had to return to his Williams garage with a fuel system issue.

He got back on track after the team believed it had solved the problem, only for his Williams to grind to a halt after a single sector.

That brought Albon's FP2 to a premature end and leaves a Williams team, who already completed a miraculous post-Brazil repair job, with plenty to do before Friday's track action.

Team-mate Franco Colapinto was 18th fastest, just ahead of Perez and Albon who didn't post a representative time.