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Formula 1 Emilia Romagna GP
Grand Prix practice results: Bottas fastest in both Imola sessions
Valtteri Bottas dominated the opening day of Emilia Romagna Grand Prix practice at Imola for Mercedes on Friday, the second round of the 2021 Formula 1 World Championship season.
Charles Bradley
Edited: Apr 16, 2021, 2:00 PM
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Both Friday practice sessions have each been cut to one hour in 2021, instead of the usual 90 minutes each. FP1 was topped by Bottas, and he repeated the feat in FP2 – but only by 0.01s from teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen hit trouble when his driveshaft snapped in FP2, while Ferrari's Charles Leclerc hit the wall late on.
Emilia Romagna Grand Prix FP1 results: Bottas fastest from Hamilton
Cla Driver Laps Time Gap 1 Valtteri Bottas
23 1'16.564 2 Lewis Hamilton
25 1'16.605 0.041 3 Max Verstappen
21 1'16.622 0.058 4 Charles Leclerc
13 1'16.796 0.232 5 Pierre Gasly
21 1'16.888 0.324 6 Carlos Sainz Jr.
26 1'16.888 0.324 7 Fernando Alonso
23 1'17.457 0.893 8 Lance Stroll
19 1'17.489 0.925 9 Nicholas Latifi
24 1'17.739 1.175 10 Daniel Ricciardo
23 1'17.769 1.205 11 George Russell
25 1'17.866 1.302 12 Kimi Raikkonen
16 1'17.883 1.319 13 Lando Norris
16 1'17.935 1.371 14 Sebastian Vettel
23 1'17.984 1.420 15 Antonio Giovinazzi
24 1'18.058 1.494 16 Sergio Perez
15 1'18.228 1.664 17 Esteban Ocon
20 1'18.360 1.796 18 Nikita Mazepin
22 1'18.823 2.259 19 Mick Schumacher
18 1'19.480 2.916 20 Yuki Tsunoda
11 1'19.781 3.217 View full results
What happened in Free Practice 1?
The session began with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Haas’s Nikita Mazepin suffering early spins, while AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda visited Tamburello gravel trap after 15 minutes, from which he escaped but would remain rooted at the bottom of the times.
Teams used the majority of the session to run on hard tyres, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz leading the way on this rubber on 1m17.296s – with the second AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly also taking his turn at the top of the times.
The incidents continued, as Verstappen suffered a gravelly off at the start of his second hard-tyred run, while Hamilton chose the Variante Alta for his trip off the circuit. The session was interrupted with 22 minutes to go, when Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Perez collided on the approach to the Villeneuve chicane. Both cars were damaged, stranding them out on track and causing a red flag.
Having lost over 10 minutes of track time, all teams emerged using soft tyres, with Sainz lowering his P1 time to 1m17.197s.
Hamilton was the first driver into the 1m16s bracket, as Bottas got traffic on his first run on softs, forcing him to abort the lap, but he regrouped to set the quickest time of 1m16.564s to beat his teammate’s 1m16.605s. Verstappen was third, 0.058s off the pace – all three of them taking turns in P1 in the final moments of the session.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was fourth fastest, despite spending over half the session stranded in the pits while the team investigated a problem. Gasly was fifth, ahead of Sainz, Fernando Alonso (Alpine) and Lance Stroll (Aston Martin).
Latifi suffered a big moment at Rivazza and slid through the gravel, but ended up an impressive ninth fastest, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren. The session ended as it began, with Mazepin spinning – this time hitting the wall near the pit entry.
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Emilia Romagna Grand Prix FP2 results: Bottas fastest from Hamilton again
Cla Driver Laps Time Gap 1 Valtteri Bottas
25 1'15.551 2 Lewis Hamilton
26 1'15.561 0.010 3 Pierre Gasly
30 1'15.629 0.078 4 Carlos Sainz Jr.
30 1'15.834 0.283 5 Charles Leclerc
28 1'16.371 0.820 6 Sergio Perez
25 1'16.411 0.860 7 Yuki Tsunoda
26 1'16.419 0.868 8 Lando Norris
23 1'16.485 0.934 9 Antonio Giovinazzi
25 1'16.513 0.962 10 Lance Stroll
25 1'16.737 1.186 11 Esteban Ocon
27 1'16.817 1.266 12 Nicholas Latifi
29 1'16.823 1.272 13 Fernando Alonso
27 1'16.835 1.284 14 Max Verstappen
5 1'16.999 1.448 15 Sebastian Vettel
27 1'17.092 1.541 16 George Russell
31 1'17.179 1.628 17 Kimi Raikkonen
27 1'17.273 1.722 18 Daniel Ricciardo
24 1'17.281 1.730 19 Mick Schumacher
28 1'17.350 1.799 20 Nikita Mazepin
16 1'17.857 2.306 View full results
What happened in Free Practice 2?
In FP2, the medium tyres were used by teams from the start. Leclerc led the way initially, eager to make up for his lack of track time in the first session, heading an early Ferrari 1-2.
McLaren’s Lando Norris suffered an off through the gravel in the opening five minutes, before Bottas and then Hamilton surged to the top of the times, Bottas setting the pace at 1m15.551s.
The main incident of FP2 happened after just 10 minutes, when Verstappen ground to a halt at the end of the pit lane after suffering a driveshaft failure exiting Rivazza, costing him valuable race-simulation running time.
Leclerc was the first of the frontrunners to switch to the soft tyre but had his 1m15.367s P1 time taken away from exceeding track limits at Piratella. On their soft-tyred runs both Hamilton and Bottas were slower than expected, seemingly struggling for rear-end grip – although Hamilton did improve to get within a hundredth of a second of his teammate's medium-tyred fastest time.
Gasly set the third fastest time, ahead of Sainz. Leclerc and Perez were next up, from Tsunoda and Norris.
Mazepin had one more off, a brief grassy moment at Variante Alta, but the session was ended early by Leclerc shunting at Rivazza, damaging his right-front corner against the wall.
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