Leclerc fastest on Spanish GP Friday

Leclerc was quickest in both FP1 and FP2, ahead of Mercedes duo George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, his Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz and Red Bull’s reigning world champion Max Verstappen across the two one-hour sessions.

Spanish Grand Prix FP1 results: Leclerc fastest from Sainz

What happened in Spanish GP Free Practice 1?

After early running on the hard tyres, Sainz set the bar on softs at 1m19.907s. That looked set to be toppled by Verstappen, who set the fastest first two sectors when he came across a huge amount of traffic towards the end of the lap.

Verstappen still managed 1m20.164s to go second to Sainz but then Leclerc beat them both with a session-topping 1m19.828s effort to make it a Ferrari 1-2.

Russell was best of the rest for Mercedes, lapping 0.762s off the pace on 1m20.590s. He later had a big moment when he came across the second Red Bull, driven for the first time in FP1 by F2 racer Juri Vips.

Fernando Alonso made it two local heroes in the top five, lapping his Alpine in 1m20.768s, just ahead of the second Mercedes of Hamilton – who almost had to go off track when he caught Alonso before the final corner sequence.

Both Alonso and Vips were later handed reprimands by the FIA stewards.

McLaren and AlphaTauri shared the rest of the top 10 spots, with Lando Norris ahead of Pierre Gasly, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda.

Robert Kubica also got an outing for Alfa Romeo, setting the 13^th fastest time, with Nyck de Vries making his Williams debut and just outpacing Nicholas Latifi to 18^th.

Spanish Grand Prix FP2 results: Leclerc fastest from Russell

What happened in Spanish GP Free Practice 2?

Teams ran medium tyres at the beginning of this session, with Verstappen leading the way on 1m20.932s, 0.046s ahead of Sainz and 0.063s quicker than Leclerc – the latter suffering a scruffy end to his lap.

Sebastian Vettel was the first to set a time on softs in his updated Aston Martin, which has been the talk of the paddock today, setting the…