Less than a week after the madness of Mexico City, the drivers and teams will have to find their groove very quickly here at the challenging Interlagos, with just one hour of practice before the big qualifying session later this evening.
Understandably, there were plenty of drivers out on track right from the start of FP1. It was a positive session for Scuderia Ferrari, as the Maranello team completed several qualifying simulations, trying to get to grips with the setup of the SF21 car. It’s still early days at Interlagos, but the pace looks good as compared to McLaren.
In the final part of FP1, both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc returned to the track on soft tyres and posted their fastest laps of the session, a 1:10.124 for Carlos and a 1:10.142 for Charles, finishing the first practice session in P6 and P7, behind the Mercedes – Red Bull duo and the AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly.
Qualifying will be important for Ferrari, but crucial for the Max Verstappen and Red Bull later of course; if Serbio Perez can beat Hamilton in qualifying and the Sprint, the Mercedes driver may drop to around eighth on the grid for Sunday. The Mercedes driver is taking a new engine in Brazil and will face five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race.
Sao Paulo Grand Prix – Here are the complete results from first practice for this weekend’s 2021 F1 World Championship race at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.
Results (Classification):
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:09.050
Max Verstappen Red Bull Racing +0.367
Sergio Perez Red Bull Racing +0.442
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes +0.517
Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri +0.830
Carlos Sainz Scuderia Ferrari +1.074
Charles Leclerc Scuderia Ferrari +1.092
Esteban Ocon Alpine +1.0.95
Fernando Alonso Alpine +1.151
Lance Stroll Aston Martin +1.302
Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +1.324
Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin +1.363
Kimi Raikkonen Alfa Romeo +1.393
Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo +1.537
Lando Norris McLaren +1.560
Mick Schumacher Haas +1.835
Nicholas Latifi Williams Racing +1.852
George Russell Williams Racing +1.888
Daniel Ricciardo McLaren +1.940
Nikita Mazepin Haas +2.292
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