#RussianGP FP1: @ValtteriBottas leads @MercedesAMGF1 one-two. #F1

Bottas Russian GP FP1 – Valtteri Bottas lead from team-mate Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes one-two in FP1 at the Dutch GP, with World Driver’s Championship leader Max Verstappen third for Red Bull Racing.

 

 

The highly anticipated wet-weather did not arrive at the Sochi Autodrom in time for the beginning of the opening one-hour practice session, but although the afternoon is set to be dry for Free Practice 2, it is highly likely that rain will hit final practice and qualifying tomorrow.

 

This lead to the ten teams completing more different running plans for FP1 at Sochi, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc hitting the track immediately on the C5 red side-walled softer compounds, with the rest of the pack – bar Verstappen, who did not emerge until the first quarter was complete – split between the C3 hards and C4 medium rubber for the initial stints.

 

The second Ferrari SF21 entry of Carlos Sainz used his white-marked hards to set the first benchmark time of a 1:41.790 before team-mate Leclerc immediately jumped ahead posting a 1:38.626.

 

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Hamilton and Bottas all had momentarily spells at the top of the order during the opening ten minutes, before Leclerc’s 1:36.708 brought him back P1 before the first 15 was run.

 

Five minutes later, Bottas used his hards to take top spot with a 1:36.412, after which Leclerc – who was running a new upgraded Ferrari power-train – reported to his team “something strange happened” and returned back to the pits.

 

Verstappen made his appearance on circuit in his Honda-powered RB16B by this stage of proceedings, also emerging on the softer tyres – a tyre the leading outfits would be unlikely to want to use in Q2 and the Grand Prix’s first stint, even if qualfiying was forecasted to be a dry session.

 

The Dutchman at first ran one second off Bottas’ benchmark. but the Red Bull driver was fuelled for a long-race stint and his times dropped rapidly.

 

Despite reporting to his team “something horrible” with his Energy Recovery System deployment during his early runs, Verstappen moved to the top of the time-sheets, posting a 1:36.055 just before the 20 minute mark in the session, with the majority back in the pits.

 

Five minutes later, Verstappen ended his eight lap stint on the softer compounds with a personal best effort of a 1:35.616.

 

The Mercedes duo at that point switched to the red-branded softs, with Bottas setting the best time of the session on his opening lap on that C5 quicker tyre.

 

The Finn’s 1:34.427 put him 1.1 seconds clear of Verstappen, with Hamilton jumping into second in the pile a few minutes later and 0.211 seconds adrift of his team-mate, the Briton losing time with a slide out of the penultimate corner.

 

After the mid-way point of proceedings, the drivers switch to longer race pace runs, as Red Bull waited until 45 minutes had passed before sending Verstappen out for his qualifying simulation stint.

 

After posting a personal best effort in sector one, where Bottas was quickest to the end of the session, Verstappen was 0.2 seconds off the Mercedes driver, and although he gained 0.1 with FP1’s quickest sector two time, he lost the same amount of time through the final sector, where Bottas was also faster in opening practice, to wound up 0.227 seconds off of Bottas Russian GP FP1 benchmark.

 

Leclerc was fourth quickest ahead of Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel who reported strong wind during early proceedings.

 

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly came sixth on the time-sheets and in-front of Sainz who finished seventh and McLaren’s Lando Norris taking eighth, as Red Bull’s Perez and Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso rounded out the top ten.

 

After the chequered flag was waved, Norris clipped the inside of the pit-entry wall on his return to the pits after he spun a low-speed, which damaged his MCL35M racer’s front wing.

 

The Briton reported his “left rear just locked or something”.

 

Italian GP winner Daniel Ricciardo was 14th for McLaren, splitting Alfa Romeo Racing pairing Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Raikkonen who returned to action this weekend.

 

Giovinazzi was one of the few drivers to go off at the Sochi Autodrom’s first real corner, the 90 degree right hand turn two corner – the Italian locking both front wheels of his C41 racer heavily during the early proceedings and taking to the run-off area, then ending FP1 with a lock-up and brief slide at turn 13 – the big braking point at the end of the back straight.

 

The other AlphaTauri of Yuki Tsunoda was 16th and 3.367 seconds off session-topper Bottas Russian GP FP1 benchmark.

 

Williams Racing’s George Russell and Nicholas Latifi were 17th and 18th respectively as Haas F1 Team’s Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher brought up the rear.

 

The session was momentarily interrupted with 25 minutes left on the clock with the deployment of the virtual safety car due to allowing a marshal on track to recover a piece of debris from behind the end of the pit-exit wall.

 

You can see the full Formula 1 VTB Russian Grand Prix Free Practice 1 Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2021/races/1077/russia/practice-1.html

 

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#Formula1 VTB #RussianGrandPrix 2021 Race Preview. #F1 #RussianGP