George Russell Tops Opening Practice at Spanish Grand Prix
George Russell drew first blood at Formula 1’s newest arena, topping the times in opening practice for the Spanish Grand Prix at the freshly built Madring and leading a commanding Mercedes one-two.
The circuit was barely warm when the field burst into life. Within 100 seconds of the green light, 20 of the 22 cars had already hit the asphalt, eager to sketch the first real lines around a layout nobody truly knew. Only Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto waited, holding back as the rest felt for grip on a surface still green and dusty.
Early laps were cautious. Times sat in the 1m42s to 1m45s as drivers measured braking points and kerbs. Then the heavyweights arrived.
Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris immediately cut through that opening fog, all three dropping into the 1m39s on their first proper efforts. The tone of the session changed in an instant. The Madring wasn’t just being explored now; it was being attacked.
Hamilton, in particular, went to work. Within eight minutes he had hammered the benchmark down to a 1m36.066s and kept slicing away, stringing together laps that left the rest chasing shadows. He pushed the time to 1m35.563s, then 1m34.803s, looking completely at ease as the Ferrari danced across the new surface.
Charles Leclerc briefly interrupted the flow. The Monegasque edged ahead by 0.120s, but Hamilton hit back almost immediately, reclaiming top spot with a 1m34.620s on the medium tyres. On a track still evolving, that lap looked like a statement.
Only one driver, Gabriel Bortoleto, stuck with the hard compound in that opening phase. Everyone else leaned on the mediums, saving the softs for the second half of the hour. When the red-walled tyres finally appeared, the expectation was clear: Hamilton’s medium benchmark would surely fall.
At first, it didn’t.
Kimi Antonelli, in his first taste of Madring on softs, came within 0.063s of Hamilton’s time. Russell’s early soft runs also fell short, missing the Ferrari man’s reference by 0.109s. Hamilton remained the yardstick, and he was doing it on the harder rubber.
Then Russell found the lap.
On his third push on softs, the Briton pieced together a 1m34.145s to finally dislodge Hamilton. One more run, one more improvement: 1m34.077s. That stood as the session’s best, and with Antonelli responding with a 1m34.363s, Mercedes locked out the top two positions on a track where no one quite knew what to expect.
Behind them, the session grew scruffier. Both Leclerc and Hamilton ran wide at Turn 17 as they hunted for the final tenths. Leclerc managed only a marginal personal improvement and ended up third, 0.459s off Russell. Hamilton, fourth, remained the outlier at the sharp end: the only driver in the top group to set his best time on mediums rather than softs. The only other man in that category was Yuki Tsunoda, whose session ended early with a power steering problem on his Racing Bulls, 25 minutes from the flag.
Verstappen slotted into fifth for Red Bull Racing, 0.626s down on Russell, with Norris in sixth for McLaren. Arvid Lindblad produced one of the standout performances of the hour, muscling his Racing Bulls into seventh and clearing the rest of the midfield. Oscar Piastri completed the top eight in the second McLaren.
Behind them, the times compressed. Hulkenberg, Liam Lawson, Bortoleto, Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon and Colapinto all ended up grouped in the 1m35.5s to 1m35.9s range, fractions separating Audi, Haas, Alpine and Red Bull machinery on a track that still has plenty of grip to offer.
For the home crowd, there was at least a flicker of encouragement. Fernando Alonso, wrestling with an Aston Martin that has lacked bite this season, finished 15th. On current Aston Martin form, that counted as a small positive. He headed one Haas, both Williams, both Cadillacs and team-mate Lance Stroll.
The calm exploration of a new venue did not last. The main flashpoint arrived at La Monumental, one of Madring’s headline sections, when Lindblad came storming through on a flying lap only to find himself staring at a slow-moving Mercedes and Ferrari – Antonelli and Hamilton – right in the high-speed sweep.
“These same two guys, man!” Lindblad exploded over the radio. “Like, I don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just stupid, right in the fast corner! It’s actually very dangerous, it’s been twice now.”
It wasn’t an isolated complaint. Hamilton soon found himself in the middle of more traffic trouble, with Leclerc and Hulkenberg both impeded in separate incidents. Carlos Sainz also voiced frustration at how the seven-time world champion allowed him through at La Monumental, another sign of how tight and tense the new layout feels when cars back off in the wrong places.
Behind the headline times, the midfield and backmarker picture painted a familiar story. Ocon and Oliver Bearman kept Haas in the mix, Sainz’s Williams sat just behind, while Tsunoda’s earlier medium-tyre effort left him 18th after his power steering failure. Stroll, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas completed the order, the Cadillac pair anchored to the bottom of the timesheets more than four seconds off Russell.
For now, the stopwatch says Mercedes has adapted quickest to Madring’s sweeping corners and tricky final sector. Russell has the honour of being the first driver to top a session at Formula 1’s newest circuit. The question is whether that early authority survives once the grip comes up, the fuel loads come down, and the real fight for Spanish Grand Prix supremacy begins.
