Verstappen Fastest in First Practice at the British Grand Prix

The fourth race weekend of the season is officially underway at the iconic Silverstone Circuit, and Max Verstappen has asserted his dominance by topping the timesheets in the first practice session of the 2020 British Grand Prix.

Big news emerged in the hours leading up to the session with former F1 driver Nico Hülkenberg confirmed to replace BWT Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez after it was announced that the Mexican tested positive for COVID-19 late Thursday evening.

Prior to the weekend, race director Michael Masi was keen to declare the FIA would be clamping down on track-limits abuse after controversy in both Austria and Hungary. Any driver that exceeds the notorious black and white kerbs of Silverstone will have their laps invalidated and deleted, with more severe punishments being reserved for multiple offences.

The tyres for this race are slightly harder than the opening triple-header in Austria and Hungary, and so the teams will be utilising Pirelli’s C1, C2, and C3 compounds. At the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix one week later (also at Silverstone), these compounds will be ditched altogether; the teams will revert back to the C2, C3 and C4 compounds for added variety within strategies.

Free Practice 1 began at 11:00 AM BST with a slow start as the drivers familiarised themselves with the challenging and technical track . Gradually, it evolved to host the majority of the setup-runs in preparation for Sunday’s fifty-two lap outing.

Home hero Lewis Hamilton was the first out on track for Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.

Both Alfa Romeo driver had struggles early on, with Kimi Räikkönen spinning and Antonio Giovinazzi following suit shortly after; the latter bringing out the red flag after leaving debris on track.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel did not set a lap time in the session after inter-cooler problems prevented him from getting out on track.