FP1: Norris leads Piastri and Leclerc in interrupted first Azerbaijan GP practice

Lando Norris set the pace during Friday’s first practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, leading the way from McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc following a lengthy red flag.

After a two-week break, F1 cars burst back into action at the Baku City Circuit when the green light switched on at the end of the pit lane at 1230 local time – plenty of drivers quick to head out on track amid cloudy but dry weather conditions.

Both McLaren drivers received interesting radio messages in the early stages of the session, with Norris being told to return to the pits to “remove something”, which turned out to be a component cover, and Piastri being urged to “back off” and “avoid full load”.

Elsewhere, Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto proved just how slippery the track conditions were by going deep at Turn 3 and taking to the run-off, while Alex Albon lost one of the mirrors from his Williams and George Russell reported that he could smell “burning”.

Just under a quarter of the way into the session, with plenty to talk about already, an issue at Turn 16 triggered the first red flag of the weekend. Replays then showed that the incident had been caused by Williams’ Carlos Sainz running over the kerb and leaving part of it loose.

Norris had risen to the top of the timesheets just before that red flag was thrown, producing a time of 1m 43.747s on Pirelli’s soft compound tyre to comfortably lead Russell (also battling illness and “a serious amount of bottoming”), Leclerc and Max Verstappen.

After a delay that allowed marshals to repair the kerb, the session resumed with around 20 minutes remaining and drivers picked up their respective programmes – Piastri back in the cockpit thanks to McLaren mechanics seemingly rectifying his power unit problem.

Provisional pace-setter Norris continued where he left off to pump in a 1m 42.704s, putting him a full second clear of Verstappen and team mate Piastri, while Lewis Hamilton clipped the wall on the entry to Turn 5 and was forced to return to the pits with front wing damage.

As the final soft-shod laps came in, Piastri got a solid effort on the board to slot three-tenths behind Norris, with serial Azerbaijan polesitter Leclerc – who has topped the last four Qualifying sessions in the ‘Land of Fire’ – half a second adrift in third.

Russell wound up fourth in the lead Mercedes, from Albon (who thumped the wall late on) and the Red Bull cars of Yuki Tsunoda and Verstappen – the reigning four-time World Champion abandoning a lap when he ran out of road on entry to the tight Turn 15.

Sainz made it two Williams cars inside the top 10 positions, followed by the Racing Bulls of Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar (the French rookie another to take to the run-off in the closing stages), and the Silver Arrows machine of Kimi Antonelli.

Sauber duo Nico Hulkenberg and Bortoleto sandwiched Hamilton’s Ferrari in positions 12 to 14, from the Aston Martin and Haas drivers (Fernando Alonso just ahead of Ollie Bearman, Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon), as Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly brought up the rear for Alpine.

Drivers and teams will now regroup in the Baku paddock to dig through the data and ponder any changes before returning to the track for second practice – that session due to get under way at 1600 local time.