Formula 1: Red Bull dominate Saudi Arabian GP first practice

The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is unrecorded connected 5 Live and the BBC Sport website

Red Bull picked up astatine the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix wherever they near disconnected successful Bahrain 2 weeks agone by dominating archetypal signifier successful Jeddah.

Alonso's team-mate Lance Stroll was 4th fastest, up of the Mercedes of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

Ferrari's Carlos Sainz was seventh up of Alpine's Pierre Gasly.

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Ferrari came into the play hoping they would beryllium capable to situation Red Bull much intimately than astatine the opening race, but that was not the lawsuit successful the archetypal league astatine least.

Sainz was 1.3secs slower than Verstappen and his team-mate Charles Leclerc was 11th fastest, 1.5secs disconnected the pace.

Leclerc has a 10-place grid punishment for Sunday's contention aft already exceeding his allocation of physics power units due to the fact that of 2 failures successful Bahrain.

And during the archetypal league they announced that they had besides changed the engines connected some cars "as a precaution" pursuing Leclerc's nonaccomplishment successful Sakhir.

The league was held successful daylight successful the precocious afternoon, whereas qualifying and contention are astatine night, truthful conditions volition alteration successful what should beryllium a much typical 2nd league astatine 17:00 GMT.

Despite his pace, Verstappen was complaining implicit the vigor astir understeer - a deficiency of front-end grip, which was besides a occupation for him successful Bahrain, contempt his domination of the contention weekend.

And Hamilton, who announced earlier the league that helium had divided with his long-time trainer Angela Cullen, complained of a deficiency of grip arsenic Mercedes lagged much than a 2nd disconnected Verstappen.