Kimi Antonelli led a Mercedes one-two in an extended practice session ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix. The Italian set a 13.402 to put himself just under a tenth faster than his teammate George Russell, and the team looks to be continuing to lead the pack in the only practice session of the weekend, with the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton six tenths further behind.<\/p>\n
Antonelli goes into this weekend leading his teammate by twenty points, but during his runs, Russell spun following contact with the wall. The team has brought their first big upgrades of the season, their advantage appearing to extend after their rivals looked to close the gap in Miami. The Mercedes duo will be the favourites going into sprint qualifying later on Friday.<\/p>\n
The result places further pressure on Russell going into the remainder of the weekend, with the pre-season favourite having arrived at a circuit where he was victorious last year, hoping to halt the 19-year-old’s momentum.<\/p>\n
The session was extended by twenty-five minutes under new regulations for sprint weekends, which sees the clock stopped if there is a red flag during the original hour-long session. Hamilton put himself eight hundredths faster than his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, with the Ferrari duo seven and three-quarters faster than Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon caused the first of three red flags when he made contact with a groundhog which was crossing the track, which sent him sliding a long way down the wall and caused extensive damage to the Williams.<\/p>\n
The red flag caused by the incident was one of three; the first was when Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson stopped on track with a loss of steering, the final one when Esteban Ocon crashed his Haas after spinning on the exit of Turn Four. The Frenchman hit the wall and lost his front wing but escaped serious damage to his car.<\/p>\n
Verstappen put his Red Bull four tenths faster than the McLaren duo, with Lando Norris going over a tenth and a half faster than his teammate Oscar Piastri. The top four teams in the weekend\u2019s only practice session covered by just over a second and a half, Arvid Lindblad going best of the rest, but the Englishman was nearly half a second off.<\/p>\n
Nico Hulkenberg was ninth, going a tenth and a half faster than Fernando Alonso, getting the team into the top ten for the first time this season. Alonso put his Aston Martin between the Audi\u2019s as he went three and a half tenths faster than Isack Hadjar, as the second Red Bull missed out on the top ten.<\/p>\n
The veteran two-time champion ran an offset tyre strategy, using softs earlier in the session than most other teams. Ocon was nearly a quarter of a second faster than the two Williams, Alex Albon going just under two hundredths ahead of his teammate Carlos Sainz. Pierre Gasly put his Alpine just over a tenth and a half faster than Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n
The Canadian was nearly half a second faster than Lawson, with the second Haas of Ollie Bearman four-tenths further behind. Valtteri Bottas was nearly six hundredths faster than his Cadillac teammate Sergio Perex, while Colapinto didn\u2019t set a time after an early electrical issue.<\/p>\n
Lawson would be on the sidelines as well a moment later when he stopped with a technical issue early on.<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli led a Mercedes one-two in an extended practice session ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix. The Italian set a 13.402 to put himself just under a tenth faster than his teammate George Russell, and the team looks to be continuing to lead the pack in the only practice session of the weekend, with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,355,357,358,420,709,766,814,2252,1298,1369,1487,1570,1571,1600,1843],"class_list":["post-15950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2339","tag-canada","tag-canadian-gp","tag-canadian-grand-prix","tag-circuit-gilles-villeneuve","tag-ferrari","tag-fp1","tag-george-russell","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-mercedes","tag-montreal","tag-parc-jean-drapeau","tag-practice-one","tag-practice-report","tag-quebec","tag-lewis-hamilton"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15951,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15950\/revisions\/15951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}