Norris puts McLaren ahead on day one

The Brits’ recent improvements to the C4 soft-tire mean he jumped ahead of Wednesday morning Charles Leclercto lead the day with a best time of 1 minute 19.568 seconds, which was 0.597 seconds faster than Leclerc who managed to achieve during the first four hours of running.

As it was during the morning, the session went on uninterrupted the whole time, and it was a constant surprise to anyone expecting that the changes to the sentence rules meant teams would struggle to get high mileage quickly.

But there was again a mileage disparity across the network, such as Haas and Alfa Romeo – Both switched drivers for the second session – finished the day with well below totals in the mileage stakes, which was headed by the Ferrari 153.

In total, eight teams completed over 100 laps, with Red Bull second best with a score of 147 in the hands of Max Verstappen all day.

For most of the afternoon, there was little change to the schedules before Norris’ late improvements, with the exception of the drivers who jumped aboard for the second session on their way up the leaderboard.

This included Carlos Sainz, who took charge from Leclerc on the F1-75 wheel and finished the day with the third fastest time – 0.251 seconds slower than his best teammate, also using C3 rubber.

Lewis Hamilton Another driver was savoring his first taste of official pre-season excitement in the afternoon, as the seven-times world champion carved his way to a top 1m 20.929s – set on C3 rubber – to finish the day with the fifth fastest time, one place behind a new teammate. George Russell.

Hamilton piece of the afternoon in mercedes While the team was working on the front suspension, it was noted that the Briton’s ride was jumping around in a big way as he ran on the main road for the last hour.

Sebastian Vettel’s 1m21.276s from the morning session remained the sixth best time, while Yuki Tsunoda’s 1m21.638s placed him seventh for the day.

Fernando Alonso It was mixed to eight for Alpsalthough it improved its morning best time by about 2 seconds to 1m 21.746s – it was set on C2 tyres.

Verstappen spent every afternoon session completing the long-term effort, meaning his time from the morning session was his best all the way to the finish, finishing 9th in the combined standings for the day.

Valtteri Bottas took over from Robert Kubica In Alfa Romeo he had the tenth fastest time overall with a set of C3 tires, but he barely doubled his teammate’s laps.

Alfa Romeo revealed in the morning that it had to work on a series of minor bugs.

Alex Albon’s first audition time with Williams Resulted in the 11th fastest time, just before Mick Schumacher – In to Haas instead of Nikita Mazepin afternoon.

But Schumacher was someone else who scored a few laps as his run was severely disrupted by damage to his floor.

Lance’s Outing The lowest-ranked runner was only in the afternoon with 1m23.327s on the C2s putting him in 13th, ahead of the best efforts from the morning in a row from Nicholas LatifiMazepine and Kubica.