Max Verstappen went fastest on his last attempt in FP1. Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez completed the top 3, with Charles Leclerc and Franco Colapinto crashing into the wall.
The first laps of the session weren’t that significant, as the Baku street circuit is usually very green at the start of the weekend. “Green” means that it’s dirty and not as fast as the teams and drivers would like to.
A little reminder that Kevin Magnussen won’t be driving for Haas as he received a race ban. His seat was given to Oliver Bearman for this race.
After less than 15 minutes, the red flag was deployed due to debris on the track. The session was green-flagged a few minutes later.
Meanwhile, Esteban Ocon had to go back to the pits as he lost power during his lap. With 33 minutes to go, as he was ahead of everyone, Charles Leclerc crashed into the wall, ending his session early.
After FP1 resumed once again, the drivers started using soft tires to improve their lap times. Lewis Hamilton was the fastest, 0.168s ahead of Lando Norris. Oscar Piastri was third, with a gap of 0.432s. However, the stint on the soft didn’t last long as Franco Colapinto crashed his Williams into the wall.
There were only 11 minutes for the drivers to gather more data and get used to the track. Max Verstappen got closer to Hamilton, going just 0.036s slower than the Britton. Sergio Perez got closer as well, just 0.063s behind the leader.
In the end, Verstappen managed to go fastest, 0.313s ahead of Hamilton.