Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton finished fastest by a tenth from Max Verstappen in the first free practice session for the 2021 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort circuit, but there was not much too read into that after a disjointed hour.
With 40 minutes to go until the end, Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin car stopped on track. It seems that the German driver’s car was not electrically safe to be picked up, maybe due to an ERS system failure, which led to a long delay until the session could be resumed. As the clock ticked down to 15 minutes remaining in FP1, Sebastian Vettel’s car was finally taken back to the pit lane.
Inevitably, there was quite the queue at the end of the pit lane, as almost everyone seemed to be returning on the soft tyres for the final few minutes of this heavily disrupted session. It was therefore a busy end to FP1 on this somewhat frantic and breathless 2-mile track!
Scuderia Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz managed to complete a few fast laps and ended up right behind the duo of Hamilton and Verstappen. Carlos Sainz finished third, with a personal best lap time of 1:11.601, very close to Mercedes’ benchmark lap time at Zandvoort. Charles Leclerc was right behind his teammate, with a best lap time of 1:11.623, ahead of Valtteri Bottas and the two Alpine cars of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
Dutch Grand Prix – Here are the complete results from free practice one ahead of this weekend’s 2021 F1 World Championship race at Zandvoort.
Results (Classification):
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes – 1:11.500
Max Verstappen Red Bull Racing +0.097
Carlos Sainz Scuderia Ferrari +0.101
Charles Leclerc Scuderia Ferrari +0.123
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes +0.238
Fernando Alonso Alpine +0.658
Esteban Ocon Alpine +0.731
Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo +0.859
Lance Stroll Aston Martin +0.931
Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri +1.015
Lando Norris McLaren +1.179
Nicholas Latifi Williams Racing +1.407
Kimi Raikkonen Alfa Romeo +1.553
Daniel Ricciardo McLaren +1.581
George Russell Williams Racing +1.681
Sergio Perez Red Bull Racing +1.828
Nikita Mazepin Haas +2.016
Mick Schumacher Haas +2.347
Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin +4.484
Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri NC
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