What happened in first Russian Grand Prix F1 practice

Valtteri Bottas lived up to his Sochi reputation by leading first practice for Formula 1’s Russian Grand Prix.

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Key moments

– Bottas leads Mercedes 1-2
– Verstappen a second off at first but closes with later run
– Norris crashes in pit entry after end of session
– Leclerc fourth with Ferrari engine upgrade

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Mercedes has won every F1 race at Sochi since it joined the calendar in 2014, and it was the venue for Bottas’s first victory in 2017. Team orders prevented a 2018 repeat but he won again here last year after Lewis Hamilton was penalised.

Bottas led the Friday morning session initially with a 1m36.412s lap on hard tyres, two tenths of a second clear of Hamilton at that point.

A 1m34.427s on soft tyres just before the halfway point then cemented Bottas’s place on top until the end, with Hamilton 0.211s off him.

Verstappen – who has a three-place grid penalty this weekend for his clash with Hamilton at Monza – was some way off Mercedes’ pace until he did an additional soft tyre run near the end of the session.

That brought him up to third, 0.227s from Bottas.

Charles Leclerc will start at the back this weekend as a consequence of taking the first example of Ferrari’s upgraded engine.

He was competitive throughout first practice, despite aborting an early run when he reported “something strange” on team radio, and was only pushed back to fourth by Verstappen’s late soft run.

Sebastian Vettel was fifth for Aston Martin and Pierre Gasly sixth for AlphaTauri.

There was again a big gap between the Red Bulls as Sergio Perez only managed ninth, 1.5s from Verstappen.

Italian GP winner Daniel Ricciardo started this weekend only 14th for McLaren. Team-mate Lando Norris was 0.9s ahead in eighth, but had a bizarre end to the session when he spun in the pit entry as he headed back to the garage after the chequered flag.

After missing two races due to COVID, Kimi Raikkonen began his return to action with Alfa Romeo in 15th.

The session was largely uneventful, Norris’s late odd moment aside, although there was a virtual safety car period to allow a sprinting marshal to retrieve a small piece of debris from the inside kerb at the first corner.

Practice 1 Results