Charles Leclerc set the fastest time in the opening practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but faces a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race.
The Ferrari driver will start ten places lower on the grid where he qualifies after the team confirmed that they had to change the battery pack on his SF-24.That will put further pressure on the team as they try to overcome rivals McLaren to win the constructors’ championship.
Several drivers sat out the opening practice session of the weekend to allow inexperienced drivers to fulfil their team’s obligations for the season. Max Verstappen sat out to allow F2 championship contender Isack Hadjar to run in his car, with Carlos Sainz Jnr allowing Leclerc’s younger brother Arthur to drive his Ferrari.
World Endurance Champion Ryo Hirakawa stepped into Oscar Piastri’sMcLaren, with Felipe Drugovich taking over Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin. Ayumu Iwasa and Luke Browning were the final two drivers given a run out, in place of Yuki Tsunoda and Alexander Albon, respectively.
Although the younger Leclerc brother was quickly out on track to take advantage of his first opportunity to participate in a grand prix session, the older sibling was stuck in the garage for half an hour with Ferrari working to fire up his car after changing his energy store. Eventually, Leclerc got out with half the session gone, but made up for lost time by setting the quickest time of the hour with a 1’24.321.
Lando Norris was second quickest, two tenths slower than the Ferrari, with the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell behind. Pierre Gasly was fifth, the stewards noting but then disregarding a potential incident in which he appeared not to have slowed for yellow flags. Nico Hulkenberg, Franco Colapinto, Kevin Magnussenm Drugovich and Sergio Perez completed the top ten.
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Hirakawa was 14th ahead of Hadjar, with Iwasa 16th ahead of Arthur Leclerc. Debutant Jack Doohan was 19th with Browning slowest of all. Hamilton and Norris will be summoned to the stewards after the session for an incident where the McLaren appeared to impede the Mercedes at the final corner, while Browning was shown the black and white flag for being deemed to have impeded Hadjar multiple times.
Williams confirmed their drivers will have five-place grid penalties as a result of exceeding the maximum number of gearbox components on their cars.
2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix first practice result
| P. | # | Driver | Team | Model | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | SF-24 | 1’24.321 | |
| 2 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren-Mercedes | MCL38 | 1’24.542 | 0.221 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | W15 | 1’24.806 | 0.485 |
| 4 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | W15 | 1’25.165 | 0.844 |
| 5 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine-Renault | A524 | 1’25.333 | 1.012 |
| 6 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Haas-Ferrari | VF-24 | 1’25.373 | 1.052 |
| 7 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Williams-Mercedes | FW46 | 1’25.382 | 1.061 |
| 8 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas-Ferrari | VF-24 | 1’25.444 | 1.123 |
| 9 | 34 | Felipe Drugovich | Aston Martin-Mercedes | AMR24 | 1’25.471 | 1.150 |
| 10 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | RB20 | 1’25.483 | 1.162 |
| 11 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin-Mercedes | AMR24 | 1’25.504 | 1.183 |
| 12 | 30 | Liam Lawson | RB-Honda RBPT | 01 | 1’25.563 | 1.242 |
| 13 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Sauber-Ferrari | C44 | 1’25.611 | 1.290 |
| 14 | 37 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | RB20 | 1’25.877 | 1.556 |
| 15 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | Sauber-Ferrari | C44 | 1’25.921 | 1.600 |
| 16 | 40 | Ayumu Iwasa | RB-Honda RBPT | 01 | 1’26.121 | 1.800 |
| 17 | 39 | Arthur Leclerc | Ferrari | SF-24 | 1’26.179 | 1.858 |
| 18 | 61 | Jack Doohan | Alpine-Renault | A524 | 1’26.304 | 1.983 |
| 19 | 46 | Luke Browning | Williams-Mercedes | FW46 | 1’26.519 | 2.198 |
| 20 | 28 | Ryo Hirakawa | McLaren-Mercedes | MCL38 | 1’27.354 | 3.033 |
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Jere (@jerejj)
6th December 2024, 10:59
The first black-&-white in a practice session I can remember.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
6th December 2024, 14:30
At least he didn’t crash it.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
6th December 2024, 11:01
Oh dear. That’s probably the Constructors championship gone to McLaren then, unless they too have some kind of car issue or one driver has a bad qualifying.
Charles will be starting 11th at least so it’s unlikely he would get right to front 2 places for example.
tielemst
6th December 2024, 11:16
Sergio must be over the moon being the fastest RedBull.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
6th December 2024, 12:00
And to think anyone doubted him! He was just a bit hungry this season, he’s had a sandwich now, C’mon Checo!
osnola
6th December 2024, 13:22
He always stated his time will come…
Matthijs (@matthijs)
6th December 2024, 12:09
I always wonder why drivers get so upset when they are impeded during a free practice. Honest question. Of course your fastest lap is ruined, but based on the data you should have a clear indication of your pace, regardless of the impeding. But I am probably wrong.
DaveW (@dmw)
6th December 2024, 13:39
People get mad when they are impeded on the way to work knowing full well that they wouldn’t have beat the google maps ETA if they made that light anyway. Human nature.
ChrisJ (@chriju0411)
6th December 2024, 13:45
There’s very specific programs and readings to be had that are essential to for example evaluating new parts or car configurations and calculating strategic plans for the race. But more importantly for the driver it is not about getting the outright fastest time on that particular lap for them but much rather tyre pressures, tyre temperatures, the car’s balance – all these things shift from corner to corner, drivers need to get to grips with brake bias adjustments and diff changes between corners, the car’s energy deployment is mapped to patterns of throttle/brake inputs so any interruption is annoying cause it upsets all those processes right when getting representative laps in for the race is crucial. After all, they only have this one single opportunity to gather data and knowledge with this one particular set of tyres on this particular tyre lap age given predefined fuel loads and charge states. One lap later and all your variables have shifted again and that might not precisely explore anymore what you were originally looking for.
SPArtacus
6th December 2024, 14:29
Well, the driver and F1 engineer Ruth Buscombe who were commentating, disagreed with you. They said his constant complaints (4 different times Hadjar screamed on the radio about a lap being modestly compromised) were unnecessary as the team would be aware of why his lap wasn’t faster + what his predictive time would be and that it doesn’t impact data collection. The data collection isn’t quite on the knife edge people think and if it was, it wouldn’t be very useful as conditions, just like traffic, are always changing. Their main take away, like many familiar with Hadjar, is that he does not seem emotionally prepared to be in F1.