Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the pace in the first practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman, who was back on familiar territory after he won the last race at Sepang in 2017, crossed the line 0.383 seconds faster than Mercedes’\u00a0George Russell.<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar in the other Red Bull finished in third, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc behind.<\/p>\n
Title leader Kimi Antonelli was off the pace by over a second in the heavily-upgraded Mercedes to go fifth-fastest.<\/p>\n
The venue is hosting the Bahrain Grand Prix after the race was cancelled in April due to the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
It was a session of experimentation with several of the drivers not even teenagers when F1 last raced in Malaysia nine years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Russell said over the team radio that the track was “very cool,” but many of the drivers were hampered by tyre degradation on what was a very dusty track.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Leclerc was running on the medium type at the time when he referred to the degradation as “insane,” while Antonelli said the grip was “crazy low.”<\/p>\n
–\u00a0Why is the Bahrain Grand Prix taking place in Malaysia, 4,000 miles away? F1’s unusual race explained
–\u00a0Lewis Hamilton hits out at Ferrari hierarchy in Fred Vasseur defence: ‘Point fingers somewhere else’
–\u00a0Max Verstappen steps in for GT race at Portim\u00e3o amid two F1 triple-headers<\/p>\n
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton finished the session in sixth with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson in seventh and eighth respectively.<\/p>\n
Both the McLarens went under the radar with Oscar Piastri down in 11th and Lando Norris one place behind.<\/p>\n
The second practice session goes green at 9 a.m. BST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the pace in the first practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,88754,82],"class_list":["post-917552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen-sports-auto-racing-player-player-statscom-843471","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}