Azerbaijan GP FP1: Verstappen tops session marred by Red flags
F1 NewsFriday, 13 September 2024 at 12:36
Max Verstappen topped the first practice for the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a hot lap in the dying moments of the session with Lewis Hamilton second fastest.
The session started with an extremely green track, with dust giving drivers a lot of trouble to keep their cars pointed in the right direction with several off moments no to mention Charles Leclerc crashing as well as Williams rookie Franco Colapinto both causing Red flags.
The track was evolving at a rapid rate, with lap times dropping with a every run around the Baku street circuit and in the end Verstappen posted the fastest lap which he did in the final seconds of the session and went over three tenths faster than Hamilton.
Sergio Perez was third fastest with a lap also done just after Verstappen's and ahead of Lando Norris, fourth fastest in the McLaren.
Carlos Sainz followed in fifth ahead of Oscar Piastri in sixth with Fernando Alonso and George Russell seventh and eighth respectively.
Leclerc was ninth despite his crash with Daniel Ricciardo in tenth.
Oliver Bearman who is replacing Kevin Magnussen at Haas was 11th fastest. Nico Hulkenberg was 12th.
With the track still evolving, it would not be smart to read much into these times, not yet, so better wait and see with FP2 later today brings.
Buildup towards FP1
After a brief break, Formula 1 returns for the Azerbaijan GP this weekend, and while Aston Martin have no impact on the Championship proceedings, they are the talk of the town after their owner, Lawrence Stroll, managed to sign Adrian Newey for 2025.
Naturally, this will have no impact on the team's current season, but they will have a spring in their step as they head to Baku for the 17th round of the 2024 F1 season.
As for the on-track action, the fight will resume between Red Bull and McLaren, the former on the defensive, the latter on the offensive and within a chance of taking the lead in the constructors' standings if the Red Bull RB20 decides not to turn around the streets of Baku.
With McLaren announcing they will support Norris now as he fights Verstappen for the title and with Piastri declaring he will play ball, it would interesting to see how the "Papaya Dynamics" work out.
On the other hand, Ferrari arrive into Baku on the high of their recent Monza victory with Leclerc who expects his SF-24 to be rapid for this race, so will the Reds have any say?
Mercedes as well are looking to try and return to their pre-summer break form, and have ditched their latest floor upgrade this weekend in order to try and understand why it did not work - the floor they introduced at Spa.
Speaking of upgrades, only three teams have new parts this weekend, with Red Bull having a new floor body for their RB20, while their junior team VCARB have a new front wing that should the requirements of Baku.
Red Bull also have a new rear beam wing, which was not mentioned in the FIA car presentation submissions.
Aston Martin have a lower deflector with a revised bottom edge at the rear of their AMR24.
As for tyres, Pirelli are still going soft with their tyre selection: C3 (Hard), C4 (Medium) and C5 (Soft).
Driver-wise, Bearman will make his first full F1 weekend debut replacing Magnussen who is serving one race ban.
FP1 Session Highlights
The session started in dry conditions, track temperature at 43 degrees Celsius while the air temperature was 30 degrees.
Drivers were out on track as soon as the green light was shown and soon Piastri reported that the track felt very low grip.
The tyre of choice for all the cars was the Medium, except for the Alpine duo, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon who were on the Hards.
Norris soon reported steering issues, a familiar problem for McLaren of recent, he said: "It's super easy to turn right and harder to turn left, it doesn't feel symmetrical."
Piastri soon came on the radio again to report quite some bottoming on his McLaren at high speed, while Hamilton is still suffering from a hot seat.
Lance Stroll on the other hand was a bit more critical telling his team. He said: "This is not a car, this is not a car right now!"
Driver complained were plenty as Russell told his team: "I've got something in my left elbow aggravating me, if we could take a look?"
But then and less than 15 minutes into the session, the Red flag was out to clear debris at Turn 12.
The session was resumed with less than 42 minutes on the clock, but only a couple of minutes after that, Ocon reported loss of power and limped back to the Alpine garage.
Ocon did not rejoin the session as it appeared that Alpine needed to change the Frenchman's power unit. Not ideal...
Soon after that Sainz locked up heavily going into Turn 7 and ended up in the run-off area, no damage, but soon Leclerc had a moment and got too close to the walls but survives with no contact.
Three minutes away from the half time, Leclerc had another "I am stupid moment" and ended up in the wall at Turn 15 having failed to slow down his car and it didn't turn.
The Red flag was out again and Leclerc explained over the radio: "I took the dirt on the outside."
The session was resumed with under 25 minutes remaining and the Soft tyres started making their first appearance as the times continued to fall.
The running did not last long, as the Red flag was out for a third time as Colapinto who lost the rear of his Williams in Turn 4 and ended up in the wall.
"Sorry for that guys," the Argentinian said over the radio.
The session restarted with less than 11 minutes on the clock and drivers lined up in the pitlane to get running again.
Soon Alex Albon had a moment at the same corner where his teammate crashed but kept going, just causing a brief Yellow flag after ending up in the run-off area.
In the final few minutes, Medium tyres were back for some runs on high fuel loads.
How they finished
Verstappen's fastest lap time in FP1 was a 1:45.546, 0.313s ahead of Hamilton in second as Perez was 0.063s behind the Briton in third.
Norris was 0.481s off the pace in fourth with 0.146s ahead of Sainz, fifth in the Ferrari, and in turn was 0.109s ahead of Piastri, the Australian sixth fastest in the second McLaren.
Alonso was 0.906s down on the best time in seventh and 0.064s ahead of Russell in eighth.
Leclerc's time before crashing, a 1:46.608, was good enough for ninth with Ricciardo tenth.
Azerbaijan GP FP1 Classification
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