Practice 1 Report - Leclerc quickest in first session

Charles Leclerc
© Ferrari

Ferrari’s chances of winning the Constructors’ title took a big blow before the cars even took to the track for the FP1 session in Abu Dhabi. A battery issue on Charles Leclerc’s car forced the Scuderia mechanics to change both the Energy Store and the Control Electronics Unit on his SF-24. This change will force the Monegasque to lose ten places on the grid, as he’s exceeding his season allocation of those parts and with Leclerc starting Sunday evening’s race from, at best, P11, the chances of a Ferrari one-two finish, necessary to fight for the title, have slimmed considerably. The only high point of the session for Leclerc was sharing the track with brother Arthur, as the young driver was one of six rookies to take to the track in this session, taking over Sainz’s car.

Felipe Drugovich (in Stroll’s car), Isaak Hadjar (in Verstappen’s place), Ryo Hirakawa (taking over from Piastri), Ayumi Isawa (replacing Tsunoda) and Luke Browning (in Albon’s Williams), were the other five drivers who took the rookie seat for Aston Martin, Red Bull, McLaren, VCARB and Williams, respectively, the Brazilian impressing once again, as he got inside the top ten and beat team regular Fernando Alonso by 0,033s! For Hadjar the main issue was his seating position, as he complained there was not enough clearance between his knees and the steering column, leading to an early spin in the chicane, as well as finding traffic in a couple of his initial laps on the Soft tyres.

Although FP1 and FP3 sessions in Abu Dhabi are not representative – the cars are running in much higher temperatures than whet they’ll face in qualifying and the race – Ferrari and McLaren were clearly faster than heir direct opposition. Leclerc beating Lando Norris by 0,221s to establish the best time of the session. Clearly his late start – the team only fixed the battery issue halfway through the session – didn’t affect Leclerc’s performance but he now faces an uphill battle on Sunday evening to try and recover the places he’ll lose to this penalty.

Mercedes struggled quite a lot, particularly in the final, slowest, section, with Hamilton, third quickest, almost half a second behind Leclerc and Russell – who had traffic on his quickest lap – a further 0,35s in arrears. However, Hamilton has been summoned to the Stewards for allegedly impeding Norris into the last lap early in the session, so the veteran may get a reprimand as the Stewards tend to be quite lenient when such incidents happen in Free Practice.

Pierre Gasly was, again, best of the rest, but with so many top drivers watching from the pits, the Frenchman was fifth quickest, marginally ahead of Hulkenberg, Colapinto and Magnussen. As for Sérgio Pérez, the Mexican wasn’t able to join the front runners and was only 10thquickest, 1,162s slower than Leclerc, but the real pace from Red Bull will only be seen in FP2, when track conditions will be relevant and Verstappen will be back in his car.

Ryo Hirakawa spent most of his session working on aero and mechanic measurements for McLaren, getting a late run on Soft tyres. A small mistake into the chicane between the two back straights led him to abort the first quick lap but the Toyota WEC driver then managed to move up to P14 – and second of the rookies – in his second effort. Just 0,003s slower than his compatriot, Ayumi Isawa did a great job on his second outing for VCARB, the young Japanese setting the 15th quickest time and being just 0,3s slower than team regular Liam Lawson – a very good effort given his lack of Formula 1 experience.