2021 Qatar GP, Ferrari first practice report: Carlos P6, Charles P7. Ferrari first practice report.

Formula 1’s first ever weekend in Qatar was off and underway today at the Losail International Circuit for the first practice session ahead of the main event on Sunday, as Kimi Raikkonen – who has raced on a decent number of the 75 tracks to have now appeared in the F1 World Championship – was the first out onto the Losail surface. Max Verstappen comfortably led Formula 1’s first ever session at the Losail International Circuit by over four-tenths of a second.

His closest rival was not either of the Mercedes drivers, but former team mate Pierre Gasly in his AlphaTauri. The pair of W12s came next, but Verstappen’s championship rival Lewis Hamilton was over three-quarters of a second slower having reported a lack of power and pitted briefly due to a car problem.

Despite the dusty circuit, which normally leads to a slow start to a session, all 20 drivers were out on track within the first 10 minutes: plenty of laps completed by Scuderia Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in the opening free practice session, mainly on the soft tyre, as the Maranello team looks to gather as much data especially on a track where no previous data is available in order to understand the behaviour of the tyres and what the ideal setup should be. Charles and Carlos also attempted different approaches to several corners to maximize the lap time, based on the information provided by their race engineers.

A reasonable start of the Qatar weekend for Scuderia Ferrari, with Carlos Sainz finishing FP1 in sixth place (personal best lap time of 1m24.713s), with his teammate right behind him (1m24.790s), ahead of Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon and Lando Norris who completed the top ten. AlphaTauri Honda seem to be strong also on this track, while for Ferrari the pace as compared to rivals McLaren looks encouraging.

Results from the first practice session at the Qatar Grand Prix, Round 20 of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship.