Valtteri Bottas topped the limited opening practice of Canadian Grand Prix ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso.
A glitch with the CCTV forced Free Practice One for the Canadian Grand Prix to be delayed, and after just under ten minutes of running, the session was abandoned.
The first drivers out of the garage were the Oracle Red Bull Racing duo of Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez, who aimed to establish the early pace. Verstappen took the lead by posting a time of 1:20.231 on the soft tires, but only a few seconds later, his teammate Perez passed him by posting a time that was 0.077 seconds faster on the same tire compound.
Stroll who wanted to make a good first impression at his home race, outperformed both Red Bull drivers beating teammate Alonso by more than six tenths with a time of 1:19.175 on the soft compound.
The Silverstone squad anticipates a successful weekend in Montreal as they attempt to make up for the poor performance in Barcelona by having made several updates to their AMR23 coming to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Soon after, Bottas of Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake shot to the top of the timesheets with a lap time of 1:18.728 on the medium compound tires. However due to significant technical issues at the circuit, that lap would wind up being the fastest lap of the practice.
Pierre Gasly was alerting the BWT Alpine F1 Team on driveshaft issues as Bottas posted the quickest time; as a result, the Frenchman was forced to stop on the racetrack resulting to a red flag. After a quarter of an hour, the session was still under the red flag.
Many others became perplexed because there didn’t seem to be a clear cause—other than Gasly’s stalled car on the track, which would be simple to move.
The FIA confirmed that the delay was brought on by local CCTV cameras that were not working properly and rendered it hazardous to continue the practice. For safety reasons, the FIA needs to be able to observe the entire track, hence all CCTV must be operational.
The FIA discontinued the session and issued a formal statement regarding the situation at hand.
“The session restart has been delayed due to issues with the local CCTV infrastructure around the circuit. The local organisers are working to resolve the issue and until that time we can’t restart for safety reasons.”
The top three in the final rankings were Bottas, Stroll, and Alonso, with the Red Bull team of Perez and Verstappen rounding out the top five. Oscar Piastri of the McLaren F1 Team, as opposed to his teammate, was able to get out on the track and post a time good enough for sixth place.
Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen of the Haas F1 Team were ahead of Guanyu Zhou in positions seven and eight respectively. Similar to Nyck de Vries, who finished last among the drivers who took part in the shortlived session Scuderia Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. and Charles Leclerc finished tenth and eleventh despite lap times that did not accurately reflect their performance.
