Mercedes’ George Russell led his team-mate Kimi Antonelli in a largely incident-free FP1 session for the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix at the Madring.<\/p>\n
Russell set the benchmark of 1m34.077s with Antonelli 0.286s off the pace. The pair set their respective fastest laps on soft tyres towards the end of the 60-minute session – the first for F1 at the new street circuit on the outskirts of Spanish capital Madrid.<\/p>\n
Barring a few yellow flags for spins and off-track excursions, the session was trouble-free with no red flags waved.<\/p>\n
Numerous drivers had their times deleted with 12 violations at Turn 5 and nine at Turn 17. Graining was also visible on the medium and soft tyres after just a handful of laps, with the spectacular-looking banked Turn 12 (La Monumental) putting considerable load through them.<\/p>\n
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third on soft tyres, 0.459s off the pace, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton locked up at Turn 17 on a soft-tyred flying lap, so his fastest lap of the session was a 1m34.620s set on mediums.<\/p>\n
Leclerc is believed to be using the older-spec Ferrari power unit from Zandvoort after crashing out at Monza with the upgraded Ferrari engine.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris was two tenths off Max Verstappen in sixth, with the McLaren driver\u2019s fastest time coming early into a soft-tyre stint, his team-mate Oscar Piastri another two tenths off in eighth.<\/p>\n
Between the McLarens was Racing Bulls’s Arvid Lindblad, around a second off the pace.<\/p>\n
Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg was 1.452s off in ninth, and Red Bull’s stand-in Liam Lawson rounded out the top 10.<\/p>\n
The field was split by 4.741s with Cadillac rounding out the standings – Valtteri Bottas seven-tenths behind team-mate Sergio Perez, who in turn was half a second back from the next-slowest team.<\/p>\n
Aston Martin’s home driver Fernando Alonso was 2.396s off the pace in 15th but almost eight tenths faster than team-mate Lance Stroll, 19th.<\/p>\n
Carlos Sainz began his home weekend in 17th, 2.793s off the pace, while Williams team-mate Alex Albon was seven tenths slower and 20th ahead of only the Cadillacs.<\/p>\n
FP1 times<\/p>\n
George Russell (Mercedes) 1m34.077s
Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.286s
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.459s
Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.543s
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.626s
Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.870s
Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +0.956s
Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +1.071s
Nico Hulkenberg (Audi) +1.452s
Liam Lawson (Red Bull) +1.462s
Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +1.575s
Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.680s
Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.757s
Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.856s
Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +2.396s
Ollie Bearman (Haas) +2.680s
Carlos Sainz (Williams) +2.793s
Yuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls) +2.862s
Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +3.177s
Alex Albon (Williams) +3.514s
Sergio Perez (Cadillac) +4.073s
Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac) +4.741s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes’ George Russell led his team-mate Kimi Antonelli in a largely incident-free FP1 session for the 2026 Spanish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-888176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}