F1 | Isola: “Free practice went more or less as we expected”

Max Verstappen ended the first day of free practice valid for the French Grand Prix, the seventh round of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship, in the lead.

The Dutchman from Red Bull, after the involuntary failure to pass in Baku, showed the great potential of the RB16B on the Le Castellet track, relaunching the challenge to Lewis Hamilton for the championship leadership. Mercedes, on the other hand, seemed much more comfortable around the curves of Paul Ricard, an aspect that could help the Englishman fight tenth after tenth for today's pole.

See you at 12.00 on Sky Sport F1 HD for live coverage of the third free practice session in France. Teams and drivers will have a further hour available to best set up the single-seaters in view of qualifying which will start at 15.00pm, again this afternoon.

French GP, how the first free practices went

* Max Verstappen (Red Bull) set the pace during today's free practice for the French Grand Prix, followed by the two Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton. Bottas was fastest in the morning session, before Verstappen improved the Finn's time in the afternoon. On both occasions, P Zero Red soft tires in the C4 compound were used.

* The teams mainly used the P Zero White hard and P Zero Red soft compounds in the morning, while the P Zero Yellow medium was used extensively in the first part of FP2, followed again by the soft compound when the teams concentrated on the running simulations qualification.

* The track was rather "green" and slippery in the morning also due to some recently resurfaced parts, but it progressively rubberized over the course of the afternoon and gradually provided good grip.
The weather was dry and hot throughout the day, with FP2 reaching 31° ambient temperature and 49° asphalt temperature. Slightly cooler conditions are expected for qualifying, and there is the possibility of even lower temperatures for the race and rain on Sunday morning.

* Since several laps were done with the soft and medium compounds, the gaps are quite in line with those expected: around 0,6 seconds between soft and medium and an estimated gap of 0,5 seconds between medium and hard. This means that both the medium and soft compounds could play an important role in tomorrow's qualifying.

Mario Isola, head of F1 and Car Racing at Pirelli

“Free practice went more or less as we expected. FP2 times were slower than the same session in 2019, mainly due to today's stronger winds, and partly due to the partial resurfacing of the track. We have seen that the medium and soft compounds are quite close, which should put them both in play for tomorrow's qualifying and also play a key role from a race strategy perspective.

The teams were able to collect a lot of data on the soft and medium compounds with different fuel loads, while the hard compound was used less and mainly in the morning. So it will be interesting to see how all this translates in terms of strategies and approach to tomorrow's qualifying, which should always be held in warm and dry conditions albeit cooler than today."