F1 2021 Spanish Grand Prix: Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas finishes No 1 in Free Practice 1, Lewis Hamilton 3rd

F1 2021 Spanish Grand Prix: Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas finishes No 1 in Free Practice 1, Lewis Hamilton 3rd-

The session was paused briefly early on for a Nikita Mazepin off, and red-flagged with 15 minutes remaining as Robert Kubica – driving in place of Kimi Raikkonen in this session – beached his Alfa Romeo at Turn 10. As Barcelona didn’t host pre-season testing for the first time since 2014, drivers were keen to test the track with the 2021 cars – and try out the re-shaped Turn 10 too.

Beginning the session on hards –as did all others bar home favourite Fernando Alonso – Hamilton switched to softs halfway through to go top with a time of 1m18.627s, but his team mate Valtteri Bottas beat that with a benchmark of 1m18.504s. Bottas had a near-miss as he almost rear-ended a slow Carlos Sainz on the racing line, but fortunately avoided contact in the dying minutes of FP1.

Red Bull’s Verstappen split the Mercedes with two minutes remaining, ending up just 0.033s off Bottas’s benchmark with a late switch to soft tyres. Sergio Perez finished ninth overall, his session beginning slowly as he tested new aero parts on the RB16B.

It’s a @MercedesAMGF1 sandwich with @Max33Verstappen in the middle for FP1! 👀#SpanishGP 🇪🇸 #F1 pic.twitter.com/jDj7Kxpsx7

— Formula 1 (@F1) May 7, 2021

F1 2021 Spanish Grand Prix Live: Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas finished No.1 in first practice, Lewis Hamilton third

F1 2021 Spanish GP LIVE: All you need to know about the circuit

The drivers love the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which is just as well because they spend huge amounts of time pounding around it during winter testing. The track is a good mix of high- and low-speed corners, with the challenging Turn 3 right-hander a great chance to evaluate the balance of the car your team’s designers have given you to fight with for the season. The race takes place over 66 laps. The best lap time on the circuit is 1:18.183 by Valterri Bottas in 2020. The tyre allocation for Barcelona is also the same as Portimao, with Pirelli again bringing its three hardest compounds due to the loads generated by the cars at the Spanish venue.

F1 2021 Spanish GP LIVE: When and where to watch 

F1 2021 Spanish GP LIVE streaming in India will be available on Disney+ Hotstar VIP this weekend starting 7th May. On day 1, the live streaming will begin at 3PM for F1 Spanish GP Practice One. Meanwhile, Practice two will be available on the same day at 6:30 PM. The race day is on May 9 at 6:30 PM.

Here’s the F1 Spanish GP schedule you can stream on Disney+ Hotstar VIP this week.

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2021 Driver Standings