2024 F1 Round 1, Bahrain GP FP1: Ricciardo Fastest in 1:32.869, Norris Just 0.032 Seconds Behind, Tsunoda Fourth

The opening practice session for the season-opening 2024 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix took place at the Bahrain International Circuit on the evening of 29 February Beijing time. RB’s Daniel Ricciardo led the session with a 1:32.869, just 0.032 seconds ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris, with team-mate Oscar Piastri third. The other RB driver, Yuki Tsunoda, finished fourth.

This was the first practice session of the 2024 season. The teams were familiar with the venue after completing pre-season testing at the same circuit the previous week, but strong winds had deposited plenty of sand and dust on the surface, leaving less grip than during testing. Pirelli brought the hardest end of its range to this event: the C1, C2 and C3 compounds.

Verstappen, targeting a fourth consecutive championship, experienced car problems during practice. He reported over the radio that the car was “jumping” during gear changes and that the throttle was also behaving abnormally under braking. He finished only sixth, 0.369 seconds behind Ricciardo. Team-mate Sergio Pérez was twelfth.

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso finished fifth, but Lance Stroll was deeply unhappy with the car’s handling through Turns 1 and 2 and ended up only fourteenth. Mercedes drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were seventh and ninth respectively; both locked up and ran off the track during the session.

Ayao Komatsu’s Haas team occupied the bottom two places, with Kevin Magnussen nineteenth and Nico Hülkenberg twentieth, although their lap times suggested that both cars were carrying large fuel loads. Alpine also struggled, with Esteban Ocon seventeenth and Pierre Gasly eighteenth. Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu reported brake problems early in practice and spent some time in the garage before returning on soft tyres to set the fifteenth-fastest time.

During the previous week’s pre-season test, a drain cover beside Turn 11 had come loose twice. With very little chance of rain forecast for the race weekend, the organisers had completely sealed the drainage channel with concrete.