BRITISH GP – Lando Norris a tenth and a half ahead of Lance Stroll in first practice
Lando Norris was fastest in the first practice session ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, the McLaren driver set a 27.420 to go nearly a tenth and a half ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll. The Englishman goes into this weekend looking to bounce back from his collision with Max Verstappen five days ago in Spielberg.
Norris goes into this weekend looking to bounce back from his collision last weekend with Verstappen, but he will be searching for victory once again at Silverstone. He certainly did that choosing the soft tyre to put him at the top of the times. Norris going a tenth faster than Stroll.
Stroll spilt the two McLaren’s nearly a tenth faster than Oscar Piastri, who topped the times at one stage as his teammate Norris went two-tenths faster. But it wasn’t a perfect session for Australian as a hydraulic issue caused him to stop on his way to the pit lane causing its briefly to close.
Verstappen put his Red Bull fourth, the three-time champion was nearly a tenth behind Piastri, he was also just under a hundredth faster than George Russell. However, like Mercedes and Ferrari, Red Bull didn’t run the soft tyre but will likely be at the front in qualifying.
The fact that, after initial hard-tyre running, McLaren went for softs and Red Bull mediums made it difficult to gauge who has the early upper hand in what is expected to be another close battle between the teams at Silverstone.
Fernando Alonso put his Aston Martin sixth as he spilt the two Mercedes, the Spaniard was over half a tenth behind Russell with his former teammate Lewis Hamilton six hundredths behind.
Hamilton was nearly half a tenth faster than Charles Leclerc, whose Ferrari teammate was two hundredths further behind. Esteban Ocon put his Alpine tenth with the top ten being covered by just over half a second. Ferrari has slipped back in recent races and that showed with Leclerc nearly half a second off the fastest time.
Nico Hulkenberg was eleventh the Haas driver just over a tenth outside the top ten, the German nearly two-tenths faster than the Sauber of Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo. Hulkenberg’s incoming replacement for 2025, Ollie Bearman was fourteenth six hundredths behind.
Guanyu Zhou was half a tenth behind Bearman and the Chinese driver had a similar margin over Alex Albon. Several teams used the session to run young driver, Jack Doohan seventeenth ahead of the Williams’ Franco Colapinto to seventeenth, as Isack Hadjar was nineteenth fastest at the wheel of the Red Bull RB20 – nearly causing an incident with Norris at the end.
Yuki Tsunoda was last after beaching his RB in the gravel early on, triggering a red flag and ending his participation in the session.