The British star, second in the classification, lamented the lack of power of his propeller, whose combustion chamber premiered in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The Dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull), leaders of the championship, set the best time this Friday in the first free practice for the rookie Qatar Grand Prix, the twentieth and penultimate of the Formula One World Cup, which takes place in the Losail circuit; where the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) y Fernando Alonso (Alpine) they scored the sixth and seventeenth time, respectively; and the Mexican Sergio Pérez, the eighth.
Verstappen covered, in the best of his 22 laps, with a soft tire, the 5,380 meters of the Qatari track – a circuit with 16 curves and a long straight, of more than a kilometer – in one minute, 23 seconds and 723 thousandths, 437 less that he French Pierre Gasly (Alpha Tauri), which spun 28 times.
The sevenfold English world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) -second in the World Cup, 14 points behind the Dutchman-, who repeated the Qatari track 21 times, set the fourth time of the test, 786 thousandths behind the Dutch and three tenths behind his teammate Finnish Valtteri Bottas. At the beginning of it, the British star lamented the lack of power of his propeller, whose combustion chamber premiered in São Paulo Brazil), where he extended his own all-time F1 win record to 101. An engine that, in order, will not hurt at all on the long Losail straight.
The session served as a mere contact with a track to which almost everyone sought their limits and some exceeded them, without major incidents; and that concluded with 28 degrees Celsius ambient and 39 degrees in the rather abrasive asphalt of Losail: reason why in this Grand Prix it is shot with the hardest range of compounds (C1 -hard-, C2 -medium- and C3 -soft) .
Sainz repeated the debuting track 26 times – about 20 kilometers from Doha, the capital of Qatar – and pushed to the point of going long a couple of times, the second after the last corner and before entering the pit lane. He was not the only one to overdo it of the limits on a track unknown to all; and his time was the sixth of the session, 99 hundredths behind his former teammate Verstappen, with whom he coincided at Toro Rosso. The talented Madrid driver, seventh in the World Cup, surpassed his teammate Monegasque Charles Leclerc, seventh in training and one place ahead of him in the competition, with eight and a half points more.
The Mexican Sergio Pérez -fourth in the World Championship, 25 points behind Bottas, who aspires to snatch the final third place in the last three races- set the eighth time in a session in which everyone set their best time with the soft compound and in which the brave from Guadalajara made 22 laps. In the best of them he was one second and almost two tenths of the time of his Dutch teammate, who was clearly the fastest in this first contact, beating the two Mercedes by almost half a second and by almost eight tenths.
Alonso – eleventh in the World Cup – marked the seventeenth time. The Asturian double world champion He spun 21 times and was 2 seconds 182 thousandths of Verstappen’s time.
The second free training session, which will be much more indicative, as it will be held at the same time as this Saturday’s qualification and Sunday’s race, will start at 09:00, from Ecuador. (D)
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