George Russell topped the timesheets at the end of free practice in Las Vegas with a series of scorching runs that have many casting their minds back to his dominant victory here last year.
Free practice 1 is rarely reflective of the weekend’s general pecking order, and this was especially true on Friday. With rain having fallen earlier in the week, the track was significantly damper than it is expected to be on race day. As a result, the first free practice session had no shortage of incidents. Alex Albon locked up at turn one and later impeded Isack Hadjar. A series of lockups late in the session further hindered the Thai driver’s progress, though he did manage the second-fastest time. Turn 14 proved to be a point of contention as Fernando Alonso, Charles Leclerc, Albon and Yuki Tsunoda all ran wide at the tight left-hander.
The same could also be said of turn 12 as Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly, Lance Stroll and Lewis Hamilton all took to the runoff. Hamilton’s teammate Leclerc had a largely trouble-free run en route to first with a time of 1m34.802s. Albon was second ahead of Tsunoda, who pipped his teammate, Max Verstappen.
Free Practice 2 was a stop-start affair. With the track still slippery, Verstappen slid wide at turn seven, while Norris had wayward moments at turns one and 14. The championship leader narrowly avoided the barriers while rejoining the track after the latter incident.
Bearman went deep at turn 14, while Hamilton had a fast lap disrupted by Nico Hülkenberg. The session was red-flagged for track maintenance and resumed with less than five minutes remaining. The teams rushed their drivers to the end of the pit lane in order to set their final flying laps. However, Leclerc immediately reported a gearbox problem that left him unable to shift. A second red flag brought an end to the session with Norris on top, 0.029s ahead of Kimi Antonelli.
Despite a lack of rainfall, the track was once again damp come the start of free practice three, so much so that all the early runs were conducted on intermediate tyres.
Norris was the first to switch to softs but did so prematurely. Implored by his race engineer to exercise caution, the championship leader struggled for grip and could not set a representative lap time. His teammate, Oscar Piastri, had telemetry issues and also failed to get a complete lap in, as a result, the two McLaren drivers ended the session 19th and 20th.
This may not be indicative of their one-lap pace, but the amount of time lost has put Norris and Piastri on the back foot. As the session neared its end, the track began to dry. Less than 15 minutes remained, which ruled out the possibility of any race simulations; all the drivers ran softs, and the lap times began to tumble. George Russell went fastest with three minutes to go, only to be outdone by Albon and Verstappen in quick succession. Russell regained the initiative but was under threat from Verstappen once again, that was until the Red Bull driver went deep at turn 17 and aborted his final run.
Verstappen voiced his frustration at the slow-moving cars ahead as he was forced to leave the racing line and take to the damp sections of the track. In the end, it was Russell on top ahead of Verstappen, Albon, Hadjar, Hamilton (who's widely tipped to be a possible podium contender this weekend), Lawson, Stroll and Alonso. Pierre Gasly rounded off the top ten despite an off-road excursion in FP3.
As expected, Mercedes and Red Bull look to have strong pace in Vegas. However, with raindrops falling at the end of FP3 and the track evolution significant, qualifying in Sin City will be a hotly contested affair.
