“George Russell leads first session of free practice in Miami with new upgrades from Ferrari and Alpine”

First part of free practice

Sunny. Dry. Air +30C, track +49C

If at the last stage with the Saturday sprint in Baku there was only one training session and it turned out to be shortened due to red flags, in Miami the teams got the opportunity to fully work with new products during three sessions of free races.

Five out of ten teams brought new items to the American stage. In particular, a series of car upgrades began at Ferrari. Alpine continued to work with a new bottom, tested in Baku. The track around the stadium in Miami can hardly be called a test, but this is the only opportunity to test before a series of three Grand Prix in a row, which will begin the European part of the season.

Like last year, the cars were slipping, the normal grip was only on the trajectory, but this only added to the interest.

For the first series of laps, everyone went to Hard and Medium, leaving Soft until the second half of the training, when the asphalt was covered with used rubber. On cold tires, Verstappen and Perez drove off the track in the first turn. On the first lap, Russell complained about the steering and lost half the session while the mechanics changed the steering rack. De Vries turned around – he waited for the rivals to pass, and continued to move.

After half an hour, the riders began to switch to Soft in short series of laps, which affected the results.

For the 33rd minute, the session was stopped by red flags. Nico Hulkenberg crashed the car after hitting the barrier after turning around in turn two. The car with the broken suspension had to be evacuated, the barrier repaired – the pause lasted nine minutes, then the riders left again – and almost everyone chose Soft for the last attempts.

George Russell took the lead with a final lap time of 1:30.125.

Results of the first session