Perez kicks off 2023 to head FP1 over Alonso

The benchmark from Perez came halfway through the hour-long session and, despite a late effort from Alonso, the Red Bull driver’s time stood firm.

In warm 27-degrees C conditions, albeit unrepresentative of those the drivers will face in the night-time qualifying and race sessions, Williams’ Alex Albon was first onto the scene as the Grove team sought to get the early running in, with new team-mate Logan Sargeant following him out of the pitlane.

As the two Williams pitted after a single exploratory lap, Lando Norris was afforded the chance to set the first recorded time of the year – a 1m37.462s on the medium tyres.

This was quickly shattered by Perez, who laid down a 1m35.069s – nearly five seconds away from the 1m30.305s he’d recorded in testing on C4 Pirelli tyres, incidentally not a compound that will be in use this weekend.

But Fernando Alonso swung in to displace the Mexican with a 1m35.048s, and while Max Verstappen rifled in his first time a couple of minutes later, the defending champion was 0.381s away.

Alonso held the fort for the opening 10 minutes, but Perez then later eclipsed the Aston Martin with a 1m34.343s as the first quarter of the session begun to elapse.

The gap closed slightly when Alonso set a 1m34.867s, but the early advantage continued to belong to Perez as teams used the early phases of the session to explore set-ups and with the customary daubing of flow-vis paint to inspect the aerodynamics.

After a quiet opening half-hour, Perez was now armed with a set of soft tyres and crushed his own benchmark by nearly two seconds, posting a 1m32.758s to flex his advantage at the top. He was followed across the line by team-mate Verstappen, whose own soft-tyre benchmark was 0.6s off the pace.

Drivers then began to explore the limits of the cars more freely following a tentative opening half-hour, and mistakes began to creep in; Alonso had a wide moment at Turn 4 seconds before Norris went straight on at Turn 1, the Briton bleeding off the brakes before the front tyres had a chance to lock.

Carlos Sainz then suffered a spin at Turn 9 as the rear of his car stepped out through the curved braking zone; but the Spaniard was able to contain it and corral his Ferrari into facing the right way. He later attributed this over the radio to cold tyres on the right-hand side.

Norris moved up to third on soft tyres after the flurry of mishaps…