Lewis Hamilton goes fastest in the first practice at Zandvoort circuit

Mercedes has gone fastest in the first ever practice at Zandvoort since the last Dutch grand prix took place at the seaside circuit in 1985.

Lewis Hamilton set a 1.11.500 after just 17 laps of the track. Next in line was the home hero Max Verstappen who is in high spirits racing in front of orange laden grandstands full to the brim with #33 fans.

The first practice session was expected to bring out some yellow flags or even reds with not a single driver having raced a grand prix at the new calendar addition.

Most drivers had been working hard in the simulators to catch up on track knowledge and to maximise their pre-race experience.

The first driver to be caught out was Alpha Tauri rookie Yuki Tsunoda who span after just 2 minutes. A disappointing start for the young Japanese driver who would have been hoping to get as much track time as possible before the more important sessions heading further into the weekend.

Next up it was a much more experienced driver who ran into issues track side causing the session to be red flagged. Sebatien Vettel’s Aston Martin ran into a MGU-K issue which caused the German driver to exit his vehicle and grab the nearest fire extinguisher in an attempt to cool his car down.

Drivers experienced a 35 minute delay during which the Aston Martin was recovered from the track. That caused a scramble when the track was declared safe to return to with the drivers rushing to get as much track experience as possible.

As for the results, the Ferraris seemed to be enjoying the tight banked turns of the Dutch circuit as they finished up in 3rd and 4th.

The fans will be hoping for a better showing from Verstappen in the next free practice as he has a lot of weight on his shoulders this weekend. But even still he was only 0.097s off Hamilton with 2 more practices to go before qualifying tomorrow.

Here are how they classified in FP1:

_{Featured image source: twitter.com/mercedesAMGF1}