Sergio Pérez finished in the lead in the first practice for the Formula 1 Azerbaijan GP. Thus gives Red Bull their first point against Ferrari
The first free practice for the Azerbaijan GP, held this Friday morning (10), opened the work of the eighth of 22 rounds of the Formula 1 World Championship in the 2022 season. Amidst the tight fight between Ferrari and Red Bull, the initial track activity showed who comes out ahead on the streets of the capital Baku: Red Bull. Sergio Pérez was fastest on a windy morning.
The demonstration of strength of the Energy team, considered to be the favorite of the weekend due to the characteristics of the Baku track, was important. Even though the only possible comparison was with soft tires and at qualifying pace, since, other than that, the Austrian team used only medium tires while Ferrari bet on the hard ones.
In this scenario, Pérez took a big lead even with multiple attempts by Charles Leclerc, who was second. Max Verstappen was third, while Carlos Sainz closed the sequence of drivers with the two best cars on the grid.
TL1 also showed plenty of porpoising, as expected for a real street track with long straights like this. Not only Mercedes suffered: basically all the teams suffered from the kicks. Pierre Gasly was one who even said that he has never been in a car that bounced as much as in this TL1. It's a question for the weekend.
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On a windy day in the Azeri capital, Formula 1 was back on a street track after two weeks of the Monaco GP. And as soon as the pit-lane gave the green light and opened its doors, an avalanche of cars was on the track. Within three minutes, all 20 drivers had already put their cars on the track for their first appearance. The main choice at the first moment was on medium tires, with Ferrari on the hard and Aston Martin on the soft. Pirelli, it should be said, selected the softest possible range - C1, C2 and C3 - for the weekend.
Sergio Pérez, last year's winner, pointed with yellow paraffin on the rear for Red Bull's aerodynamic order tests, while Sebastian Vettel warned on the Aston Martin radio that the car's steering wheel was moving sideways on the straight.
The track movement was for real: not only did everyone leave the garage in the first few minutes, but Kevin Magnussen was the last to record a timed lap just eight minutes into the session. No installation laps only.
Then the official FOM broadcast showed Mick Schumacher's Haas standing in a corner. For a moment, the concern was whether the young German driver had crashed again, but no. Then the TV pointed out the problem: a waterfall leaking from the car. The order to pull over came from the engineer. VSC was activated for a moment while they removed the car and the water.
As soon as everything resumed, with about 12 minutes of practice, Max Verstappen decided to go for time. The championship leader clocked 1min46s932 in what was the first real fastest lap so far. Next, Charles Leclerc turned 0s522 slower and jumped up to second place. It does not hurt to reinforce: Verstappen was using medium tires against Leclerc's hard ones.
By the way, speaking of Ferrari, Carlos Sainz had as a great appearance until then the complaint that the cars were jumping a lot, especially on the very long straight - the longest on the Formula 1 calendar. Leclerc also warned that the wind "was insane."
Meanwhile, Lance Stroll clipped the wall and luckily got out without damage. The next problem - and VSC triggered - would be over Nicholas Latifi, after 20 minutes of the session. The Williams driver stopped on the track and warned, "the car just died."
At the 30-minute and metae mark of the practice session, Verstappen was leading with Pérez now second. Leclerc was third and had Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda close behind, with Sainz sixth. Kevin Magnussen, Fernando Alonso, Alexander Albon, and Esteban Ocon rounded out the top-10. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were 11th and 13th respectively.
The track was fairly stationary halfway through the practice session, however. Pérez was the only one of the front-runners to do a fast lap, while Gasly, even in fourth, was complaining. For the Frenchman, the Baku track was causing the worst porpoising of the year so far. Any comparison between Red Bull and Ferrari was still pointless, since the Italians had only used hard tires.
The second half of practice started to bring more people to the track again. Stroll, who had touched the wall earlier, was now exploring the escape area and showing difficulties navigating the track. Meanwhile at Mercedes, two cars in the garage and expressions of concern.
With about 20 minutes to go, it was time to put on soft tires and test qualifying simulations. Sainz was the first among the leaders and was behind Verstappen, but in direct comparison with the red striped rubber, Perez was better than the Dutchman: he did 1min45s476 and jumped to the front. Leclerc followed without trying.
Alonso was fifth even though his lap was on soft rubber, while Russell managed to get into the top-10 for the first time of the day.
Leclerc was on soft tires with a little more than 15 minutes to go, but a tricky lap with a rubber lock put the Monegasque only third. Red Bull was showing that it had some advantage at the start of the weekend.
Hamilton was also late for the soft tyres, and he did well for Mercedes: he was fifth, but 1s5 slower than Perez.
Although the Alfa Romeo didn't draw any attention or go anywhere near the top-10, it was noteworthy that Guanyu Zhou was faster than Valtteri Bottas throughout TL1. Traffic was also starting to cause a stir: Leclerc and Vettel were complaining about Russell and Tsunoda respectively. Another important thing to note is that, apart from Schumacher and Latifi, who had problems early in practice, the 18th and slowest on track was Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian's situation at McLaren is getting weirder and weirder.
Leclerc went for another try on soft tires and improved: he passed Verstappen, but was still 0s3 behind Perez. He tried again and jumped to 0s1 behind, but it was the best he could do. Mexican lead.