Dutch GP - Practice Roundup
After a 35-year hiatus, Formula 1 is back to Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix. Let's see how practice went on the first two days of the weekend.
FP1: Lewis Hamilton topped the first session of the Grand Prix weekend, setting a 1:11.500, followed by Max Verstappen in P2 and Carlos Sainz in P3.
Following his Ferrari teammate, Charles Leclerc ended up in P4, just ahead of Valtteri Bottas in P5. A great first session for Alpine, with Fernando Alonso in P6 and Esteban Ocon in P7, separated by 0.073s. Completing the top 10, Antonio Giovinazzi in P8, Lance Stroll in P9 and Pierre Gasly in P10.
Sebastian Vettel's (P19) Aston Martin suffered a MGU-K issue and stopped right outside the pit lane, causing a 35-minute long red flag, as the marshals recovered the car.
Full FP1 Classification:
FP2: "A session from another season" I would say, as Ferrari managed a 1-2, with Charles Leclerc in P1 and Carlos Sainz in P2, followed by Esteban Ocon in P3.
Valtteri Bottas finished in P4 ahead of Max Verstappen in P5, followed by Esteban Ocon in P6. Completing the top 10, Pierre Gasly in P7, Lando Norris in P8, Antonio Giovinazzi in P9 and Sebastian Vettel in P10.
The start of the session was delayed by 5 minutes and was red flagged twice: Lewis Hamilton (P11) detected an oil system problem five minutes into FP2, bringing out an 8-minute red flag, only to be followed by Nikita Mazepin (P19) spinning into the gravel of turn 12, 30 minutes into the sesson.
Full FP2 Classification:
FP3: Saturday morning delivered the unfortunate news of Kimi Raikkonen testing positive for Covid-19, and -as Alfa Romeo said- isn't experiencing any syptoms and is in good spirits. The team announced that Robert Kubica, Alfa Romeo's reserve driver, will be replacing him for the weekend, making it Kubica's first Grand Prix appearance since the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which was his last race for Williams.
Practice-wise, Max Verstappen topped the last practice session of the weekend, setting a 1:09.623, followed by Valtteri Bottas in P2 and Lewis Hamilton in P3.
Sergio Perez in P4, towed his teammate to complete a clean sweep of fastest sector times, as Verstappen went purple in all three sectors, clearing 0.556s ahead of Bottas and 0.794s ahead of Hamilton. Just over a tenth behind in P5, Fernando Alonso set an incredible time in his Alpine, ahead of Lando Norris in P6. The Aston Martin pairing of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel ended up in P7 and P8 respectively, followed by Charles Leclerc in P9 and Pierre Gasly in P10.
Carlos Sainz (P16) lost the rear of his Ferrari coming out of turn 2, and ended up in the wall of turn 3, bringing out the fourth red flag of the weekend so far.
Full FP3 Classification:
Click here to see the full Dutch GP weekend schedule.