Norris heads opening practice from Stroll

Lando Norris drew first blood at the British Grand Prix weekend at Silverstone to headline the opening Formula 1 practice session of the weekend, which featured an early red flag.

In cool conditions, albeit with the disappearance of the morning’s mizzling rain, the track surface proved somewhat difficult in the early phases as grip was at a premium.

The early laps were over 90 seconds long, before Max Verstappen posted a 1m29.906s on the hard tyre to start bringing the pace into the right ballpark.

Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time British Grand Prix winner, made a significant leap with a 1m29.035s, before team-mate George Russell found a 1m28.888s time to move on top of the order.

Yuki Tsunoda produced a red flag as the opening 10 minutes drew to a close after losing grip at Luffield, spinning to send his RB into the gravel.

This prompted a hiatus of around eight minutes as the stranded VCARB 01 was collected from the gravel, before running could resume.

Russell again picked up the pace to set a 1m28.156s on the hard tyres and improved to a 1m28.046s shortly after, but Lewis Hamilton found a scant 0.003s advantage to move to the top of the order.

The two Mercedes were shaded by Carlos Sainz, who produced a 1m27.925s on the brink of the first half-hour’s close. This coincided with a switch to the medium tyres among a handful of front-runners.

Russell and Charles Leclerc pressed these into service to move to the top of the order, but Verstappen shaded Russell by just 0.01s on the medium compound. The Dutchman found an extra smidgen over Russell to briefly extend his advantage by an extra three hundredths, before Russell responded in kind to restore the original gap.

Oscar Piastri then hurled his McLaren to the top of the order on soft tyres, but was then overlapped by team-mate Norris by two-tenths on the same compound.

Piastri’s misery was compounded after crawling to a stop on his way to the pitlane, apparently suffering from a hydraulic issue. This forced the brief closure of the pitlane entry, as Piastri’s car was collected.

Lance Stroll had put his Aston Martin between the two McLarens in the order, 0.134s behind Norris, and 0.211s clear of Piastri.

Verstappen had the fastest medium-tyre time, besting Russell, the soft-shod Fernando Alonso, and Leclerc. Sainz’s hard-tyre time was good enough for ninth, ahead of Esteban Ocon.

Of the four rookie drivers given an FP1 opportunity, recently signed Haas driver Ollie Bearman was…