Spain – Free Practice 1: Bottas, a Best Time… and an Oil Leak!
Valtteri Bottas made a successful start on track, with the fastest time in FP1 in Barcelona. However, the Finnish driver's car suffered an oil leak at the end of the session! The two Ferraris positioned themselves ahead of Lewis Hamilton, with Sebastian Vettel in 2nd and Charles Leclerc in 3rd.
This first practice session was dominated by the championship leader! On the soft tires, Valtteri Bottas completed his fastest lap in 1:17.951, notably thanks to a very good third sector.
Very close to beating the time of driver #77, Sebastian Vettel delivered an almost perfect lap, with absolute records in the first two sectors… before making a small mistake in the final sector. The four-time world champion still managed to outpace his teammate, Charles Leclerc, by a tenth. Finishing in 4th place, Lewis Hamilton appeared frustrated by the difficulty in preparing his tires. The Briton ended up six-tenths behind the benchmark set by Bottas! His garage neighbor still demonstrated that the innovations brought to the W10 are quite effective.
But despite his best time, Bottas experienced a real scare at the end of the session: the W10 was suffering from an oil leak! The mechanics will inevitably be busy around the stricken car so that the Finn can cover FP2.
In the midfield competition, the Haas team also integrated new parts, reportedly with high added value, if we are to believe Romain Grosjean’s performance. The Frenchman managed an impressive feat by climbing to 5th place! Haas notably benefited from Red Bull’s setbacks, who were only 8th with Pierre Gasly and 12th with Max Verstappen.
At the bottom of the table, weekends keep following a similar pattern for Williams, but there are improvements! Thanks to their own developments on both cars, Robert Kubica and Russell finished 19th and 20th, three seconds off the lead; however, the gap with the rest of the pack has closed, with the Polish driver ending this FP1 just three-tenths behind Räikkönen, who was 18th in his Alfa Romeo.
Relatively calm until then, the session was marked by a red flag just a few minutes before the end. The incident was caused by Lance Stroll’s off-track excursion, as the Canadian placed the two left wheels of his Racing Point onto the grass at the entry of the fast curve of turn 9. His session ended in the wall: with his car now damaged, he risks missing the second free practice session, scheduled to start from 3 PM.
From our special correspondent in Barcelona (Montmelo)
