Bottas leads Mercedes 1-2 in the first practice session

Valtteri Bottas led a Mercedes 1-2 ahead of Lewis Hamilton in opening practice for the 2021 Formula 1 Grand Prix of Russia, while World Championship leader Max Verstappen came third for Red Bull.

The much-discussed wet weather didn’t reach Sochi in time for the 60-minute session to start, but while FP2 will also be dry, it is very likely that rain will affect the final practice session and qualifying on Saturday.

This resulted in the teams completing more varied running schedules for the opening action in Sochi, with Ferrari immediately sending Charles Leclerc on the soft tire with the rest of the field – with the exception of Verstappen, which didn’t show up until almost 15 minutes – between hard and medium rubber split for the first run.

Carlos Sainz used the exertion to set the first benchmark time for first place to 1: 41.790 seconds before Leclerc immediately took the lead with 1: 38.626 minutes.

Sergio Perez, Hamilton and Bottas all had a short time at the top of the times in the first 10 minutes before Leclerc returned to first place at 1: 36.708 just before that part of the session was over.

Five minutes later, Bottas used his strength to move forward in 1: 36.412 minutes, whereupon Leclerc – equipped with a new Ferrari engine with an upgrade hybrid system – reported “something strange” and returned to the pits.

It was by this point that Verstappen had made his first appearance, including on the soft tires – a tire that the leading teams are unlikely to want to use in Q2 and the first stint of the race, even if qualifying was forecast to be dry.

Initially he was almost a second behind Bottas’ pace, but the Dutchman was fueled up for a long stint and his times fell accordingly.

Although he reported “something terrible” with his ERS outing on his first laps, Verstappen drove to first place with 1: 36.055 minutes shortly before reaching the 20-minute mark, while most of the other cars were back in the pits.

Five minutes later he finished his eight-lap run on the softs with a personal best of 1: 35.616 minutes.

The two Mercedes cars had switched to the soft rubbers by this time, with Bottas using the softest C5 rubber in the Pirelli range, which was suitable for Sochi’s smooth, grippy surface to get the best time on this compound on his first timed lap of the session.

His 1: 34.427 minutes pulled him 1.1 seconds off Verstappen, with Hamilton a few minutes later shifting 0.211 seconds behind second place, the world champion losing time with one slide out of the penultimate corner.

After halftime was over, most of the pack switched to long-term data collection as Red Bull waited for 45 minutes to complete before sending Verstappen back for a qualifying simulation.

After setting a personal best in the first sector, in which Bottas was the fastest until the end of the session, Verstappen was over 0.2 seconds behind Finn, and although he scratched 0.1 seconds with the fastest middle sector of FP1 , he lost the same amount again running through the technical finals sector, in which Bottas was also best in the opening session, by 0.227 seconds behind him.

Leclerc finished fourth ahead of Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel, who reported the wind was strong during the early race.

Pierre Gasly finished sixth for AlphaTauri, finishing ahead of Sainz and McLaren’s Lando Norris, while Perez and Fernando Alonso completed the top 10.

After the checkered flag fell, Norris cut the inside of the pit entrance wall on his return to his garage after spinning halfway at low speed, damaging his front wing.

He reported “the stern just locked or something.”

Monza winner Daniel Ricciardo landed in 14th place and shared the Alfa Romeo couple Antonio Giovinazzi and the returning Kimi Raikkonen.

Giovinazzi was one of several drivers who went out of the race in the first real corner of the track, corner 2 90-degree right – the Italian blocked both front wheels heavily in the beginning, went into the right of way and ended the session with one Lock. up and a short slide on Turn 13 – the big stop at the end of the back straight.

The session was briefly interrupted 25 minutes before the end when the virtual safety car was activated so that a marshal could recover a piece of debris behind the end of the pit exit wall.