Lando Norris held off reigning Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen in the latter stages of Friday’s practice session to top the timesheets for the Dutch Grand Prix.
The McLaren driver set a 1 minute, 11.330-second lap time at Zandvoort, while Verstappen was .023 seconds off the pace in his Red Bull Racing entry. Verstappen is hunting his ninth consecutive win of the season this weekend, while Norris will be searching for his first career F1 victory.
“Today was a good day, we tried a few different things on the car. There’s a couple of things we want to fine tune like the balance, but on the whole it was handling well, even on the long runs. The car has a lot of potential so hopefully we can have a good day tomorrow,” Verstappen said.
Williams Mercedes’ Alexander Albon finished practice in third, while seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton was fourth.
“That was a great day for me. I woke up this morning so excited to get back in the car, and from the first lap it felt like we had a good starting point to work from. The first practice session was generally good; we made some changes for FP2, and I’m not sure if we progressed or not from them, so we will deep dive tonight to investigate,” Hamilton said.
Alphatauri’s
There was one major incident that occurred early in the practice session, with Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo crashing within moments of each other in turn three. There is concern that Ricciardo injured his arm. The Alphatauri driver was taken to the local hospital for further evaluation.