Practice 1 Report - Verstappen quickest

Max Verstappen
© Red Bull

By Luis Vasconcelos

Max Verstappen showed he is in Qatar to secure his third consecutive title this weekend, and was quickest in the only practice session of the weekend in his Red Bull-Honda.

Carlos Sainz in his Ferrari was second, more than 0.4s behind, and Charles Leclerc was third fastest, with all drivers facing extremely windy conditions that kept blowing sand into the tarmac, with Turns 4 and 10 proving quite tricky.

The new tarmac has proved to have a lot less grip, for now, than the original one, as Verstappen’s best time was 3.8s slower than what he managed also in FP1 for the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix.

Verstappen did his best time with one single lap on Soft tyres at the end of the session, while both Ferrari drivers needed a couple of attempts to get the most out of the faster tyres as getting the fronts up to temperature looked a bit of a challenge for most teams.

Sergio Pérez was only 5th quickest, more than 0.6s behind his team mate.

Ferrari was the only team that got its drivers to try all three compounds available for this weekend – the three hardest on Pirelli’s range – trying to cover as much ground as possible to prepare for the two qualifying sessions and the two races that will follow from now on. Sainz summarized the grip levels perfectly, early on in the session, when he told his race engineer, “my Dad would be quick in these conditions”, alluding to the legendary driver’s exploits in rally and rally-raids.

Fernando Alonso in the Aston-Martin-Mercedes was fourth quickest but, unlike the faster drivers, didn’t use Soft tyres.

Yuki Tsunoda in the AphaTauri-Honda was sixth, followed by Nico Hulkenberg in the Haas-Ferrrai, George Russell in the Mercedes GP, Oscar Piastri in the McLaren-Mercedes, and his team mate Lando Norris in tenth place.

With track temperature expected to drop by around ten degrees Celsius and the wind intensity also likely to change, qualifying is will be a bit of an adventure into the unknown for everyone - so the teams will have a lot of guess work to do in order to get their set-ups right for the rest of the weekend.