Lando Norris blitzed Zandvoort in the opening practice session for the Dutch Grand Prix to lay down a significant marker in his bid to close the gap again on McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in their fight for this year's F1 drivers' championship.
Norris heads into this weekend's race nine points adrift of Piastri, and with momentum firmly on his side after winning three of the last four races since crashing into the back of the Australian in the Canadian Grand Prix.
Whilst it is often unwise to read too much into FP1, Norris' leading time of 1:10.278s was a statement performance from the Briton whose pole position lap from a year ago was just six-tenths of a second faster. Piastri was unable to match Norris, finishing 0.292s off the pace.
There is a small caveat in that the Pirelli rubber at this event for this year is a step softer than last season, but nevertheless, Norris' lap was still stellar.
The best of the rest was Aston Martin's Lance Stroll, half a second adrift.
The session ended in remarkable fashion, however. With the clock having ticked down to zero and the drivers lining up to conduct practice starts, Verstappen went into Turn 1 too deep, locked up and ploughed through the gravel before coming to a step, much to his clear annoyance with a shake of the head.
As for Lewis Hamilton, needing a reset in performance following a disastrous end to the first part of the season in Hungary, after which he described himself as "useless", the seven-time F1 champion suffered an early spin in his Ferrari that will have knocked his confidence.
The 40-year-old ended the session a lowly 15th, 1.682s adrift of compatriot Norris.
Result Free practice 1 - Dutch
With the medium compound tyres being used by the drivers early on, Hamilton posted the first lap of any significance at 1:13.306s, although he was top of the timesheet for a matter of seconds as Max Verstappen went almost half a second faster to the delight of his home fans.
But again, that was short-lived as first Piastri, and then Alonso, went quicker before Verstappen edged ahead with a lap of 1:12.101s, two-tenths of a second faster than last year's leading FP1 time from Norris.
Just 11 minutes into the session, and after a major spin for Hamilton on the approach to the iconic banking, and for Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda, who went into the gravel under braking for the chicane at Turn 11, a red flag soon followed.
Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, whose European season has been wretched following a strong start to his debut campaign, beached his car in the gravel after suffering from major oversteer on entry to Turn 8.
Following a five-minute delay, the mistakes continued, with Williams' Carlos Sainz trundling across the gravel at the Turn 12 left-hand loop before Verstappen improved his leading time to 1:11.986s.
Continuing on the medium rubber, Piastri improved by almost two-tenths of a second to take up top spot, with Norris 0.451s adrift just before the midway point of the session when the switch to soft tyres commenced.
On his first tour on the red-striped Pirellis, Norris smashed his way to the top with a 1:10.278s, a time that remained the benchmark for the rest of the session.
Following shortly behind, Piastri was unable to hook up his car as well as Norris, finishing 0.422s down on his team-mate. A second lap was quicker, but still 0.292s back.
Stroll slotted himself into third position on the timesheet ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso, followed by Williams' Alex Albon, and then Verstappen in sixth, and who was the only other driver to finish within a second of Norris.
In his Mercedes, George Russell was 1.108s down, with Sainz, Sauber's Gabriel Bortoleto and Pierre Gasly in his Alpine completing the top 10, with the Frenchman 1.335s back.
Charles Leclerc underlined that Ferrari was clearly not suiting the circuit, as the Monégasque was 14th, 0.009s ahead of Hamilton, whilst Tsunoda was 16th, 1.848s behind Norris.
Antonelli, naturally, following his early spin, propped up the timesheet, four seconds back and with only six laps to his name. That could prove disastrous for the young Italian as FP2 is set to be hit by heavy rain, meaning further crucial is likely to be lost.
Given the weather forecast, after the mid-session blitz on soft tyres, there was considerable long running on that followed as the teams did all they could to bank as much data as possible.
Most read
In this article
Join the conversation!