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(Motorsport-Total.com) – Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) secured the fastest time (1: 17.879 minutes) in the first free practice for the Tuscan Grand Prix at Mugello (Formula 1 2020 live on the ticker!). But the real surprise was the great performance of the Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, who finished third, 0.307 seconds behind.
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Charles Leclerc finished third in the first free practice at Mugello Focus
Surprisingly, all the more so when Leclerc’s teammate Sebastian Vettel in the 1,000. The Scuderia Grand Prix initially had a lot more difficulties. The German started the session on harder tires and finished last in stages. When soft tires were gradually installed, it could only improve to P13 (+1,388).
Bottas laid the groundwork for his best time in the second sector with Arrabbiata’s two fast corners. Leclerc was faster in the first sector (who incidentally drives a new chassis after the accident at Monza), in the third Max Verstappen (2nd / Red Bull / + 0.048). The fastest lap (theoretically) calculated in this way would have been 1: 17.582 minutes.
“You can already see that it is a new track. Some who are otherwise at the front are having some problems at the moment,” analyzes ‘Sky’ expert Ralf Schumacher. Example: Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) finished fourth, 0.530 seconds behind. And the two Racing Points finished 18th and 19th, two seconds behind.
Not a good start to training for Racing Point
There was a technical problem with Lance Stroll’s car, but “that was quickly fixed,” says team boss Otmar Szafnauer. After the first practice session he says: “The energy from the tires is quite high so we decided to focus on that. We are the only ones who did their fast race on the hard tire. There is more to come.”
Things were better for Monza winner Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri / + 0.797) at P5, for Esteban Ocon (Renault / + 0.926) at P6 and for Daniil Kwjat (AlphaTauri / + 0.960) at P7. Lando Norris (McLaren / + 1.102) finished eighth. His highlight was when he began to sing happily on the pit radio during the radio check, until his race engineer interrupted him: “Yes, that’s fine.”
McLaren tested a new nose in the first training session, which at least optically appears to be based on Mercedes’ aerodynamic concept. The nose is only used today at Mugello for testing purposes. “We just want to know on the track if the direction we find in the wind tunnel is correct,” explains team boss Andreas Seidl.
AlphaTauri has developed updates for Mugello
At AlphaTauri there is great confidence after FT1: “I think we will be strong here,” says team boss Franz Tost. “We have some minor aerodynamic updates, for example on the underbody. I’m sure we can have a good race. And I think the top 10 will be in qualifying.”
The top 7 were in a second. There was another half second between P8 and P17. That already shows that Mugello 2020 could be an exciting affair. Alexander Albon (9th / Red Bull), Daniel Ricciardo (10th / Renault) and Carlos Sainz (15th / McLaren) were right in the middle of this highly contested package.
Williams driver Nicholas Latifi landed in the rear, who was warned for the only error of the session recorded by television cameras and for a fine of 800 euros for exceeding the speed limit in the pit lane. Instead of the 80 allowed, he drove 87.4 km / h during the measurement at 11:37 am
(F1-Paddock Live: Der Trainingsfreitag in Mugello)
