Lando Norris Tops FP1 in Brazil Amidst Tight Competition
Lando Norris drew first blood in Brazil, but the story of opening practice at Interlagos ran far deeper than a single lap time.
The McLaren driver topped FP1 with a 1m11.717s, edging freshly crowned world champion Kimi Antonelli by just 0.082s in a session that hinted at a tight, multi-team fight across the weekend.
Norris leads, upgrades land
McLaren arrived as the only team with a visible development push, rolling out a new front and rear wing, revised floor furniture and a tweaked beam wing. On a short, flowing lap where every fraction matters, the upgrades immediately looked sharp in Norris’s hands.
He threaded together the best of them. Quick through the middle sector, tidy over the bumps, and ruthless in the final corners, Norris set a benchmark that survived the late soft-tyre runs.
Antonelli, fresh from sealing his first F1 title, came closest. The Mercedes driver hustled the car around in typically aggressive fashion, missing out on top spot by a whisker but underlining why the championship was wrapped up so early. Champion or not, his intensity clearly hasn’t dipped.
Behind them, the spread tightened. Max Verstappen, wrestling a Red Bull he branded “unacceptable” on the downshifts, still dragged himself into third. Lewis Hamilton, now in Ferrari red and visibly pushing hard, slotted into fourth. Four different teams in the top four, all covered by just over three tenths: Brazil’s rollercoaster already looks like neutral territory.
George Russell backed up Antonelli in fifth for Mercedes, with Isack Hadjar putting the second Red Bull into sixth.
Rookie rush and home pride
The session bristled with new faces. Six FP1-only rookies took part, and Gabriele Mini led that particular pack with an impressive run to seventh for Alpine. In only his second consecutive FP1 appearance, he finished 0.852s off Norris and just under a tenth ahead of Alpine race driver Franco Colapinto, who ended up ninth.
Splitting the two Alpines was the local hero. Gabriel Bortoleto, driving for Audi on home asphalt, grabbed eighth and gave the crowd something extra to shout about on a Friday that often feels like a warm-up act.
Liam Lawson completed the top 10 for Racing Bulls, another solid showing from a driver permanently on the fringes of a full-time return.
McLaren reserve Leonardo Fornaroli continued the rookie theme in 11th, ahead of Haas’s Ollie Bearman and the evergreen Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. The veteran sat just outside the sharp end but, as so often on a Friday, kept his cards close to his chest.
Further back, Rafael Camara quietly ticked off an important milestone. The Ferrari junior finished his first FP1 in 18th, eight and a half tenths behind Bearman, as he methodically builds toward an unexpected grand prix debut this weekend in place of Esteban Ocon. No fireworks yet, but the laps banked under rising pressure will matter when it’s for real.
Herta finally crosses the line
Away from the headline times, Colton Herta’s afternoon carried its own significance. The American didn’t need to light up the timing screens; he just needed distance.
He got it. Herta passed the 100km threshold required in FP1 to collect the final point for his F1 superlicence, adding it to those already earned from four previous FP1 outings and his IndyCar results. That single tick in a bureaucratic box could reshape his future.
Cadillac thought it had already wrapped up the job in Mexico, only for an FIA-verified check to uncover an error in IndyCar’s published points. The miscalculation left Herta one point short and forced a return to the FP1 spotlight in Brazil.
This time, there was no doubt. With the superlicence secured, one major obstacle has gone from the path that could lead him to replace Valtteri Bottas in 2027, if the team chooses to make that move. On the stopwatch, Bottas still held sway: 15th in the Audi and nine tenths quicker than Herta. On the long-term chessboard, though, the gap just narrowed.
Frustration for Slater and Beganovic
Not everyone left FP1 satisfied.
Freddie Slater’s second taste of F1 ended even more abruptly than his first. After just seven laps, his Audi rolled to a halt and triggered an early red flag. Across two consecutive FP1 outings in Mexico and Brazil, he has managed only 21 laps in total – a meagre return for a young driver trying to learn the trade at this level.
Dino Beganovic’s session in the Ferrari never truly got going either. A mid-session floor change ate into his running, and when he finally bolted on the soft tyres, a car problem forced him to abort what should have been his key lap. He completed only 11 laps, leaving more questions than answers heading into the rest of the weekend.
As the sun dipped over Interlagos, Norris’s name sat on top of the timesheets, but the real story lay in the margins: a champion still pushing, a rookie wave finding its feet, and an American who has finally cleared the last administrative hurdle to an F1 future. Now the question is simple: who turns promise into something more when the serious laps begin?
