Miami Grand Prix: George Russell leads Mercedes one-two in opening practice

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George Russell led Lewis Hamilton to a Mercedes one-two successful archetypal signifier astatine the Miami Grand Prix with Red Bull's Max Verstappen down successful 4th place.

The Mercedes drivers benefited from runs precocious successful the league to leap up of Verstappen, who was besides pipped by Charles Leclerc's Ferrari.

Russell bushed Hamilton by 0.212 seconds and 0.424secs up connected Verstappen.

Red Bull's Sergio Perez, six points down Verstappen successful the championship, was down successful 11th place.

Nico Hulkenberg caused a red-flag play erstwhile helium crashed astatine Turn Three successful his Haas. Alpha Tauri's Nyck de Vries besides had an mishap aboriginal connected that terminated his session.

Ferrari's Carlos Sainz was 5th fastest, up of Alpine's Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin.

For Russell, it was an awesome betterment aft losing astir fractional the league due to the fact that of a steering problem.

The Briton reported connected the vigor astatine the precise commencement of the league that helium was struggling with vibrations and that helium had to pit due to the fact that helium was incapable to larn thing with the car behaving successful that way.

He returned to the way aboriginal successful the league and benefited from the champion conditions erstwhile helium acceptable his fastest clip close astatine the extremity of the hour, consecutive aft Hamilton had jumped to the apical of the times.

Leclerc besides jumped up of Verstappen successful the closing stages aft the Dutchman had acceptable the gait earlier connected his tally connected the brushed tyres.

The league was interrupted for 9 minutes pursuing Hulkenberg's accident, erstwhile the German mislaid power of his Haas done the speedy Turn Three and spun sideways into the barriers.

The different operator to person an mishap was De Vries, who continued his hard debut year.

The Dutchman, who had a torrid clip successful Baku past play with a bid of accidents, spun and tapped the partition aboriginal successful the league and missed the remainder of the hr arsenic repairs were made.

On Thursday, Perez had expressed his assurance that helium could support his situation to Verstappen each year, aft sharing the 4 wins arsenic with his team-mate truthful acold successful 2023.

But the Mexican's archetypal tally connected the brushed tyres was interrupted by the reddish emblem and though helium returned to the way aft the league was restarted, helium was a agelong mode disconnected the pace.

Listen to the Miami Grand Prix preview amusement connected BBC Radio 5 Live connected Friday, 5 May astatine 21:00 BST.

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