Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin unexpectedly led the grid in the only practice session of the weekend before Friday’s Sprint Qualifying at the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, in a session that was momentarily disrupted by an odd trackside grass fire.
As Formula 1 made its much-anticipated return to the sprawling and fast Shanghai International Circuit after five years, the beginning of the season’s first Sprint weekend saw teams experimenting with various strategies during the hour-long session. This included different approaches to tyre and potentially fuel strategies, resulting in an atypical leaderboard by the session’s end.
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Fifteen minutes into the session, a small fire erupted on the grass inside of Turn Seven, prompting Race Control to bring out the red flag and send the cars back to the pits, allowing marshals to extinguish the fire.
The situation was quickly handled, leaving only a scorched patch of grass. While it was a strange event, it seems that a spark from a titanium skid block scraping the ground in the high-speed section could have ignited the fire, especially given the dry and windy conditions in Shanghai following earlier rainfall earlier in the week.
Reigning world champion Max Verstappen dominated most of the session for Red Bull on both medium and soft tyres. However, as track conditions changed, he was bettered in the final moments—first by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and then by Stroll.
Stroll posted the quickest lap at 1:36.302, beating Piastri by 0.327 seconds, with Verstappen close behind by an additional 0.021 seconds.
Sergio Perez claimed fourth place in the second Red Bull, but the final timesheet seemed to hide the weekend’s true competitive landscape, especially with both Haas drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon finishing among the top six.
Ferrari, typically close contenders to Red Bull this season, opted for early soft tyre runs and gradually dropped outside the top 10. Meanwhile, Mercedes stood out as the only team not to use either the soft or medium tyres during the session.
Under the revised Sprint weekend format for 2024, teams had to quickly switch gears to prepare for the Sprint Qualifying later that day, a 44-minute session that determines the starting grid for the 19-lap Sprint race scheduled for the Saturday.
Chinese GP FP1 Results
2024 Chinese Grand Prix, 19 April 2024
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