The championship leader Verstappen started the race weekend on the right foot when he crossed the finish line in FP1 ahead of the Mercedes duo Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton with a lead of almost two tenths of a second.
Friday afternoon’s opening practice gave drivers the first opportunity to test out the changed corners at Yas Marina, including the hairpin from Turn 5, curving Turn 9, and Turn 12-15 under the hotel.
Most of the field focused on soft-tire running during the hour-long session, with Verstappen managing to set the early pace on the early runs for Red Bull despite reporting a problem with his steering wheel.
Verstappen told Red Bull that his steering was “down right” and “really annoying” to drive, but he still managed to overtake Hamilton by two tenths of a second during the first few runs.
Hamilton was able to improve on his first flying lap of his second run and was only 0.055 seconds behind Verstappen, only that the Red Bull driver got a lead of three tenths of a second with a lap of 1: 25.009 minutes.
Hamilton drove another hot lap but was 0.033 seconds behind his title rival before being forced to skip the lap after exceeding the track limits on the final corner, where a number of drivers were overtaken and times were scrubbed.
This meant that Mercedes team-mate Bottas finished the session in P2, 0.196 seconds behind Verstappen, as the Dutchman’s lap went undefeated in the closing stages.
Hamilton finished third ahead of Sergio Perez, who was just 0.008 seconds behind the Mercedes driver for Red Bull in fourth.
Yuki Tsunoda had an impressive start to the weekend, finishing fifth for AlphaTauri, almost half a second faster than his teammate Pierre Gasly, who was two places down in seventh place.
Tsunoda and Gasly were separated from Fernando Alonso, who finished sixth for Alpine, in a car that will have his latest ‘El Plan’ quote on its rear wing for the race weekend.
Although it took Charles Leclerc almost 20 minutes to complete his first timed lap in FP1, Charles Leclerc managed to finish the session for Ferrari in eighth place ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz, who finished ninth. Sainz reported after his first run that his car felt “pretty bad” but was able to improve his lap time in the final minutes.
Sebastian Vettel completed the top 10 for Aston Martin ahead of Esteban Ocon in the second Alpine. Ocon narrowly missed the wall at Turn 14 early in the session and later got stuck in the wrong neutral position, forcing him to slow down on track and complete a fix before revving up again.
Lando Norris finished 12th for McLaren, while Kimi Raikkonen started his last F1 weekend with 13th place, despite a spin in the newly profiled corner 9. Teammate Antonio Giovinazzi was just behind in P14 in front of Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo.
Jack Aitken made his first training appearance of the season for Williams, substituting for George Russell. Aitken was 17th, six thousandths of a second ahead of Nicholas Latifi in Williams’ sister car.
Mick Schumacher finished FP1 in 19th place for Haas, while team-mate Nikita Mazepin based the timesheet on P20, another half a second behind the pace.
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