In the first training session of Saudi Arabia’s F1 stage, Max Verstapen was at the top of the leaderboard for a long time, but was beaten by Charles Leclerc in the last minutes. Red flags were also hoisted during the training.
After about 17 minutes, the race director Nils Vitich was forced to order the red flags because a 50-meter mark had fallen on the track at the first turn. Lando Norris ran into it, as a result of which debris was scattered on the track and had to be collected. At that time, Verstapen was in the lead with a time of 1: 30.888, who had completed this lap with solid tires.
Red Bull driver Verstapen’s result remained in the first place almost until the end of the training, when the winner of the first stage of the season, Lekler with “Ferrari”, turned out to be 0.116 faster. He showed this result with soft tires.
Another one who climbed higher at the end of the training was Valter Botass. The driver of the Alfa Romeo, who took sixth place in the Bahrain stage, showed the third best result on the Jeddah track today, losing 0.312 seconds to Clare. Closer’s teammate Carlos Sains was a bit slower than him, but AlphaTauri’s pilots were in the next positions.
Although the asphalt of the relatively new Jeddah track is smoother than in Sakira, where the athletes completed the first stage of the championship, the much-discussed problem of “swimming” was a serious problem for the Mercedes team. Lewis Hamilton only finished ninth, losing to Clecker a second and a half, and at the end of the training he closed the wall a bit.
Kevin Magnussen performed well in Bahrain, but this weekend the “Haas” pilot started unsuccessfully. The car had technical problems, due to which the athlete did not perform any test laps.
The second practice runs will also take place today and are expected to start at 19:00 Latvian time.
First training of Saudi Arabian GP:
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