China – FP1: Stroll dominates a session that reveals little about the forces involved

• For the big return of the Chinese Grand Prix to the calendar since 2019, the drivers only had one free practice session to get their teeth into due to the sprint race scheduled for Saturday at 5 a.m. French time. It was therefore necessary to re-acclimatize to this particular circuit, versatile and smooth enough to overcome the majority of bumps to which the new generation single-seaters are susceptible.
• On the chronological side, it is Lance stroll who put his name at the top of the timesheet. The Canadian actually set the best time on the soft rubber, which his teammate did not do, contenting himself with working on the hard tires. Lawrence's son, who will enter into negotiations with Aston Martin for a contract extension (what suspense!) dominated Oscar piastri et Max Verstappen, in a session that really reveals little about the forces present for the sprint qualification scheduled for 9:30 a.m. this Friday.
• If the times don't mean much, it's mainly because the drivers didn't all pass the soft tires at the same time. THE Ferrari for example dominated a good part of the session, when the Aston Martins were hard and the Red Bull in Mediums.
•  Note the promising 7th place ofEsteban Ocon, which benefits from a new flat bottom unlike Pierre Gasly as part of anticipation of the development initially planned for the two cars in Miami. His Rouen teammate is last in the session, after having experienced technical problems related to his ERS, which had the gift of annoying him quite a bit.
• Also note that a red flag was waved at the start of the session, due to… a start of fire in the grass in turn 7. A start of fire quickly extinguished by the marshals! See you at 9:30 a.m. for the sprint qualification, to be followed live with commentary on AUTOhebdo.fr!

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