Norris turns on the heat at sweltering Bahrain practice

Sakhir, Bahrain: World championship leader Lando Norris topped the timesheets in a baking hot opening practice ahead of Alpine´s Pierre Gasly at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Friday.

It was hunt-some-shade time on a sweltering afternoon in the Gulf kingdom - 35 degrees celsius and track temperature nudging 50 degrees. As a consequence the relevance of the opening session on the rest of the weekend will be minimal, with second practice later Friday, Saturday´s qualifying and the race itself all staged at sunset and in cooler temperatures.

That was one main factor in teams using ´FP1´ to give a half dozen rookies a shot as a ´Friday driver´ as per the governing body´s guidelines. As a result, four-time world champion Max Verstappen, one point adrift of Norris in the driver´s standings after his win in Japan last weekend, had some down time with Ayumua Iwasa taking the wheel of his Red Bull.

Dino Beganovic was handed the keys to Charles Leclerc´s Ferrari. Other new faces were Fred Vesti (in for Mercedes´ George Russell), Luke Browning (Williams/Carlos Sainz), Felipe Drugovich (Aston Martin/Fernando Alonso) and Ryo Hirakawa, in for Ollie Bearman at Haas.

Williams team principal James Vowles explained the reasoning behind running Browning rather than Sainz, third to Verstappen in last year´s race for Ferrari. “It´s much, much warmer than it will be so it is unrepresentative, and (Sainz) has done many hundreds of kilometres around here. It´s always painful, but it is less painful to run a Friday driver here.”

Browning had a scary moment with his temporary teammate Alex Albon, the pair coming close with a quarter of an hour left of the session. The stewards immediately announced they were investigating the incident and summoned both drivers to appear at an inquiry before second practice. “Wow that was close,” said Drugovich who had a close-up view of the incident in the Aston.

Kimi Antonelli was reporting loss of power in his Mercedes over the team radio early on with the Italian teenaged rookie, who has made such a bright start to his career, forced back into the garage, missing almost the entire session.