McLaren rebounded from the blow of their double disqualification in Las Vegas by leading the only practice session at Losail International Circuit.
The two MCL39s were the only cars to dip beneath the 81-second barrier in the single hour of running before qualifying for the sprint race later today.
The pair took a while to post competitive times early in the session, when the cars took to the track on the hard tyre compound. Lando Norris eventually worked his way up to the fourth-fastest time.
Once the cars switched to soft tyres in the final minutes of the session, the McLarens appeared to come alive. Norris went fastest initially, lapping the 16-turn course in 1’20.982. Piastri was almost four tenths of a second slower than that to begin with, but on his subsequent run chipped five hundredths of a second off Norris’s best time.
Norris ran wide onto the gravel trap at the final corner on his next run, scuppering his chance of beating Piastri’s time. He was far from the only driver to encounter such a problem as drivers got to grips with the high-speed track.
Verstappen was second-fastest behind George Russell when the drivers ran the hard tyres. However he pitted soon after his first run on softs which left him half a second off Norris at the time. The Red Bull driver had various complaints about his car’s damping and power unit clipping, and was infuriated to encounter Pierre Gasly’s Alpine on a slow lap, complaining he’d been held up by the “blind idiot.”
Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz Jnr and Isack Hadjar separated Verstappen from the McLaren drivers at the end of the session. Alexander Albon took seventh in a surprisingly strong session for Williams, who did not rate their chances at this track.
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Albon led four drivers covered by less than a tenth of a second. Charles Leclerc endured a frustrating session in his Ferrari, complaining repeatedly about the poor feedback from his power steering. A clean final lap left him only eighth, four places ahead of his team mate.
Following Russell’s strong showing on the hard tyres, he was nowhere on the softs, and fell to 14th place. His team mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli made it into the top 10 behind Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin.
2025 Qatar Grand Prix first practice result
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