The first free practice session of the weekend marked the debut of 4 new drivers in f1. Lets see how things fared out in this session
Sainz tops the timesheets
Carlos sainz took P1 in Free Practice 1 for the Maranello based Scuderia, setting a time of 1:36:578, followed by this year’s world champ, Max Verstappen, who put in a 15 laps, the fastest of them only 0.224 seconds shy of Sainz’s lap.
Then comes in Lewis Hamilton in P3 on softs later on in the game, +457s off of the pace set by Ferrari, A strong show of their much needed and awaited Final Upgrade. Lance’s timesheet score and Seb’s early show of pace in FP1 assured Aston Martin of their strength in the AMR22’s speed
Speed. Perez, Alonso, Russel, Gasly, and Norris complete the latter half of the 1:37s. Vettel rounds up the top 10 with an impressive run as mentioned before. Rest of the grid lineup is below.
| 1 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | FERRARI | 1:36.857 | 19 | |
| 2 | 1 | Max Verstappen | RED BULL RACING RBPT | 1:37.081 | +0.224s | 15 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | MERCEDES | 1:37.332 | +0.475s | 20 |
| 4 | 18 | Lance Stroll | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 1:37.460 | +0.603s | 23 |
| 5 | 11 | Sergio Perez | RED BULL RACING RBPT | 1:37.515 | +0.658s | 19 |
| 6 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | ALPINE RENAULT | 1:37.713 | +0.856s | 25 |
| 7 | 63 | George Russell | MERCEDES | 1:37.802 | +0.945s | 23 |
| 8 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | ALPHATAURI RBPT | 1:37.810 | +0.953s | 24 |
| 9 | 4 | Lando Norris | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 1:37.856 | +0.999s | 23 |
| 10 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 1:38.041 | +1.184s | 25 |
| 11 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | ALPINE RENAULT | 1:38.102 | +1.245s | 24 |
| 12 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 1:38.276 | +1.419s | 21 |
| 13 | 23 | Alexander Albon | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 1:38.422 | +1.565s | 21 |
| 14 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | ALPHATAURI RBPT | 1:38.898 | +2.041s | 23 |
| 15 | 47 | Mick Schumacher | HAAS FERRARI | 1:38.922 | +2.065s | 20 |
| 16 | 39 | Robert Shwartzman | FERRARI | 1:38.951 | +2.094s | 21 |
| 17 | 28 | Alex Palou | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 1:39.911 | +3.054s | 21 |
| 18 | 98 | Theo Pourchaire | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 1:40.175 | +3.318s | 19 |
| 19 | 45 | Logan Sargeant | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 1:40.325 | +3.468s | 23 |
| 20 | 99 | Antonio Giovinazzi | HAAS FERRARI | 1:43.063 | +6.206s | 4 |
The 4 rookies for the session.
With the season coming to the end, Teams were obligated to let new drivers try their hands on the wheel. Five teams: Ferrari picked up Robby Schwartzmann swapping him for Charles, McLaren took up Alex Palou to replace Daniel Ricciardo, who kept up with Lando in the early stages of the session, an impressive outing for him; Alfa Romeo let have Theo Pourchaire a spin in Bottas’ Car and got P18 for result And lastly Williams, who had Logan Sargeant complete 23 laps around his home circuit for FP1 and got p19.
Schwartzmann topped the rookie times, although 2 seconds of the pace, still, could be worse. Alex Palou seemed pretty fascinated by the F1 car performance over the radio.
It will be interesting to see in the next session how the 2023 spec tyres fare in the long run, given the track was a bit bumpier for the cars this time on as shown by alonso, who struggled a bit before in the session.
