Pérez commands the contact with Baku with Sainz and Alonso in the 'Top 5'

MADRID, 10 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Mexican driver Sergio 'Checo' Pérez (Red Bull) has dominated the first free practice session this Friday at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the eighth round of the Formula 1 World Championship, in which the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) has started in fourth position and Fernando Alonso (Alpine) has surprised with a fifth place after the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

A 1:45.476 earned 'Checo' to lead the time table of Free Practice 1 with a tenth advantage over the Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) and three over his teammate and World Cup leader, the Dutchman Max Verstappen.

Sainz, for his part, fell half a second behind the dominator of the session to finish fourth. With the Mercedes more than a second behind the cars of the 'Scuderia' and the energetic brand, Alonso was the first of the rest, all after rushing the last minutes with the soft tire.

In a session with activity from the beginning and that left the first problems of 'porposing' -especially in Mercedes, Ferrari and AlphaTauri-, most of the drivers opted for the medium compound for the contact with the Azeri track , except for the Aston Martins, with soft tires, and the Ferraris, with hard ones.

Verstappen, leader of the drivers' standings, soon took the lead with a time of 1:48.574 before the session was affected by a 'virtual safety car' due to reliability problems with the car of German Mick Schumacher (Haas) , which had to stop in the middle of the track.

After the first quarter of an hour, Alonso dared to discuss the time of 'Mad Max', who in his next attempt destroyed the Spaniard's record, improving it by a second and a half. Pérez and Leclerc managed to get close to the Dutchman's time. Meanwhile, another engine problem, this time for Canadian Nicholas Latifi (Williams), forced a new 'exit' from the virtual safety car with just 20 minutes of Free Practice 1 disputed.

Already with soft, Verstappen lowered his time to 1:45.810, although 'Checo' appeared behind to beat his teammate by three tenths (1:45.476). In the 'Scuderia', Leclerc managed to beat Sainz's time to stay behind the two cars of the energetic brand with 15 minutes to go.

There was still time for the Monegasque to overtake his rival for the championship -who spun in his last attempt- and for Alonso to shoot five minutes on soft tires, with which he scored the best third sector of the day and with which He pushed hard with time to zero to finish fifth, the first of the rest.