The free practice sessions were shortened at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Friday. The first practice session ended early when a loose drain cover damaged George Russell’s Williams Racing car when he ran over it. The second practice session was also stop and go with two red flags after crashes for Lance Stroll (Racing Point F1 Team) and Daniil Kvyat (Scuderia Toro Rosso), with some other drivers taking to the escape roads on the dusty track and low grip conditions.
Lando Norris has scored all eight points for McLaren F1 Team with his sixth-place finish at the Bahrain Grand Prix. However, he did not set a timed lap in the first practice session thanks to Russell’s crash.
In the second session, Norris finished in tenth position with a best lap time of 1:44.295s over 32 laps, just over a tenth of a second behind team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr.
“Overall it wasn’t as long a day, or as action-packed, as I was hoping but we still made the most of it. There was a lot of track development through the second session because it was pretty much FP1,” said Norris.
“Although the F2 cars had been running, the track was improving a lot – but still very dusty, very slippery and quite difficult to drive.
“Given the lost time, we made good choices when prioritising the things we needed to test and it was a very busy session in terms of the amount of laps we fitted in. I think it was still a positive day for us, but tomorrow’s another day.”
