Brazil, FP1: Hamilton tops opening practice session for São Paulo GP

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest lap of the opening practice session for this weekend’s FIA Formula One World Championship São Paulo Grand Prix, beating championship leader Max Verstappen by almost four tenths of a second. Sergio Pérez was third, just under a tenth of behind Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen.

With a Sprint Qualifying format in place this weekend, first practice represented teams’ only opportunity to find a way forward on set-up for qualifying and as a result the session was busy throughout.

Bottas was the first of the likely front runners to show and a medium-tyre 1:12.666s put him on top before he was nudged aside by Pérez’s 1m11.774s, also set on medium compound Pirelli tyres. Verstappen then moved ahead on a 1:11.484s eventually working his way down to a time of 1m10.189s as the opening 10 minutes came to a close.

There was then a brief lull in track action, with Hamilton being one of the few to put in extended running on medium tyres.

Soon after the halfway mark though the field began to emerge for qualifying simulations on soft tyres and Verstappen lowered the benchmark to 1:09.417 with a lap that included a purple second sector. Pérez slotted into P2, just 0.075s adrift of his team-mate. Bottas then took to the track and he took third place with a lap of 1:09.867s, 0.450s adrift of Verstappen.

Hamilton finally ventured out on the softs with a quarter of an hour left and initially finished 0.351s behind Verstappen with a lap of 1:09.768s. But the Briton went for another run on the same set of softs and over the course of two further attempts he stole top spot from Verstappen with a lap of 1:09.050s.

The Duhctman didn’t respond and so took second place, 0.367s behind Hamilton. Pérez ran late in the session but he finished third ahead of Bottas, who was over half a second off his team-mate’s pace.

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly took fifth ahead of the Ferrari cars of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, while Esteban Ocon was eighth ahead of Alpine teammate Alonso, the pair setting the best times on the medium tyres, and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll completed the top 10 order.