As the only chance to get prepared for all of the competitive sessions to come this weekend, a big queue formed at the end of the pitlane ahead of the 60-minute session getting underway.
The first time was set by AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries, which established the leading benchmark at 1m49.541s.
De Vries and his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda were the only runners using the soft tyres from the off, with most of the rest on mediums while a handful began on hards.
The times tumbled quickly as the drivers got up to speed – Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc and de Vries again having brief spells in the top spot, but it was the Red Bull pair that regularly leapt ahead as they pounded around on the mediums.
Verstappen had just brought the top time down to a 1m43.834s when the session was suspended at the end of the opening 15 minutes by a red flag.
This was caused by Kevin Magnussen stopping in the Turn 1 run-off with a loss of fuel pressure aboard his Haas just after he had had to turn out of a moment close to the wall on the inside of the 90-degree right and lost all his speed as he then went near the exit barrier on the other side of the track.
As he was stranded, the session was stopped, but the delay was made longer by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine catching fire when he had gone slowly through the Turn 1 runoff well ahead of Magnussen, but then needing to stop inside Turn 12 at the track’s castle section as the flames did not go out as he toured slowly back to the pits.
The fire, initially triggered by a hydraulic leak aboard the A523, blazed for several minutes before it was eventually brought under control, which ultimately meant the teams and drivers lost nearly a quarter of their total practice time as the session resumed with 32 minutes remaining.
The pack headed back out, minus Esteban Ocon in the other Alpine and the runners that had hit trouble, including Tsunoda, who had badly damaged the rear of his AlphaTauri returning to the pits with a puncture that caused him to spin at Turn 3.
All the remaining drivers continued on using the medium and hard tyres over the session’s middle phase, with several putting in personal bests but not troubling Verstappen’s top time.
The Red Bull pair appeared to be using this time to complete high-fuel preparation running ahead of the upcoming races, before coming in ahead of the final quarter along with most others, just as Lance Stroll split the leading pair with a flier on the mediums and…
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