Andrea Kimi Antonelli tops the only practice session this weekend ahead of Sprint Qualifying. The young Italian is keeping his confidence from his last race win. George Russel made it a Mercedes 1-2 at the top of the leaderboard with Lewis Hamilton just behind.
The Pit Lane Goes Green
As always, there was a queue of traffic waiting to get out onto the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve ahead of their practice session.
There was an early problem for Franco Colopinto, who was crawling into the pits, radioing his team to say he had no throttle. He managed to get his Alpine back to the pit box for the mechanics to see what they could do. The power unit issue could prove pivotal to his sprint weekend.
Liam Lawson also ran into early issues with the power steering failing, leaving him stranded at Turn Four. This brought out the Virtual Safety Car. He had been sitting in fourth in the early session when the suspected hydraulic issue took place. However, the VSC wasn’t enough, and they had to bring out the red flag to retrieve the car.
The early pace of the session was set by Max Verstappen and Isaak Hadjar, with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri just behind.
While Piastri was setting a fast pace, his teammate Lando Norris was 1.4 seconds off the pace halfway through the session. This could be due to the different run plans ahead of the weekend, since this is the only practice session.
The Mercedes pair, George Russel and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, were also setting a good pace. With Russel just ahead of the championship leader for the first half of the session. Lewis Hamilton separated the McLaren and the Mercedes in the timesheets.
Alex Albon took the first crash of the weekend. He went into the wall. Albon hit an animal which ran onto the track, causing the incident. This brought out the second red flag of the session. Albon was ok but was taken to the pits in the medical car due to the high G-force he sustained during the crash.
The Session Resumed
The session was extended to maximise track time after the red flags. They got an extra 19 minutes. Four minutes for Liam Lawson’s red flag, and 15 minutes for Alex Albon’s red flag.
As the track warmed up, times kept getting faster across the field, with both Mercedes taking over at the top (Antonelli ahead of Russel). They were followed by both McLarens, Piastri ahead of Norris, and both Ferraris, Charles Leclerc ahead of Hamilton.
While the top of the timesheets was very team-dominated, the rest of the leaderboard was very mixed, with many teammates separated by significant time. Teams will be trying to optimise their testing of the car’s data this weekend.
With five minutes left of the session, another red flag came out. Esteban Ocon hit the wall, damaging the front wing and spreading it across the circuit. He drove the car back to the pits.
The red flag came back in with a minute left on the clock. While none of them would be able to set another lap, they were all able to do a practice start.
With no one else able to set a lap, it was Antonelli who finished fastest and Russel just behind. The Mercedes upgrade looks to be working well. Hamilton came in 0.7 seconds slower than Antonelli.
Practice One Top 10
P1: Andrea Kimi Antonelli
P2: George Russel
P3: Lewis Hamilton
P4: Charles Leclerc
P5: Max Verstappen
P6: Lando Norris
P7: Oscar Piastri
P8: Arvid Limdblad
P9: Nico Hulkenburg
P10: Fernando Alonso