Verstappen quickest as one-tenth covers top three teams

Max Verstappen led a close first practice session at Interlagos where the top three teams were covered by less than a tenth of a second.

The Mexican Grand Prix winner set a scorching pace through the twisty middle sector of the lap, almost four-tenths of a second faster than anyone including his team mate. That was enough to overcome the times lost to the Ferraris and Mercedes in the other two sectors.

Sebastian Vettel got within five-hundredths of a second of Verstappen. Lewis Hamilton, now sporting five stars on his helmet following his world championship victory in Mexico, had a similar gap to Vettel in third place.

All three set their best times on the super-soft tyres as did Daniel Ricciardo, who was almost four-tenths of a second off his team mate. Kimi Raikkonen over half a second off Verstappen but set his best time on the soft tyres. Valtteri Bottas, who lost some time while Mercedes investigated an oil leak, rounded off the usual top six.

Haas were conclusively ‘best of the ‘rest’, the pair running super-softs throughout the session. Seventh-placed Romain Grosjean got within a second off Verstappen’s benchmark, with Kevin Magnussen three-tenths behind,

Five of the six Ferrari-powered cars appeared in the top 10. Charles Leclerc was ninth for Sauber, while test driver Antonio Giovinazzi was a few tenths slower. Esteban Ocon also put his Force India in the top 10 while Nicholas Latifi drove Sergio Perez’s car.

The third test driver in action during the session was Lando Norris. While Stoffel Vandoorne ran the medium tyres for much of the session, Norris was four-tenths of a second quicker on the softs, despite an off at turn four.

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Pos.	No.	Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap	Laps
1	33	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’09.011		16
2	5	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’09.060	0.049	20
3	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’09.107	0.096	28
4	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’09.395	0.384	23
5	7	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’09.573	0.562	28
6	77	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’09.679	0.668	23
7	8	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’09.922	0.911	28
8	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’10.236	1.225	15
9	16	Charles Leclerc	Sauber-Ferrari	1’10.346	1.335	28
10	31	Esteban Ocon	Force India-Mercedes	1’10.361	1.350	34
11	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Renault	1’10.662	1.651	34
12	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’10.679	1.668	34
13	36	Antonio Giovinazzi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’10.685	1.674	29
14	18	Lance Stroll	Williams-Mercedes	1’10.799	1.788	30
15	10	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’10.934	1.923	30
16	47	Lando Norris	McLaren-Renault	1’11.013	2.002	28
17	35	Sergey Sirotkin	Williams-Mercedes	1’11.037	2.026	30
18	28	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’11.176	2.165	32
19	2	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren-Renault	1’11.452	2.441	23
20	34	Nicholas Latifi	Force India-Mercedes	1’11.493	2.482	34

First practice visual gaps

Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.

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