In the first practice session of the Monaco Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton from Britain led the way. He was just a tiny bit faster than Oscar Piastri from McLaren. The top five drivers were all very close, within a quarter of a second of each other.
During the session, there was a red flag. This happened because Zhou Guanyu’s car left some debris on the track at Turn 1. Despite this, Guanyu didn’t have a major accident.
For the first 20 minutes, the drivers were continuously on the track, trying to get used to the Monaco circuit. Most of them were using hard tires. As they got more comfortable, they started to drive faster.
At first, Piastri had the fastest lap time with medium tires. Then, Max Verstappen took the lead with an even faster lap time, also on medium tires. Lando Norris briefly took the top spot with hard tires, but then Charles Leclerc from Ferrari set the fastest lap time using the hardest tire option.
Leclerc continued to improve his lap times, setting an even faster one before Piastri took back the lead with soft tires. However, George Russell from Mercedes quickly surpassed Piastri’s time.
Hamilton then set the fastest lap time of the session. But the session was stopped because Guanyu’s car caused debris on the track. When it restarted, there were no more improvements in lap times.
In the end, Hamilton was the fastest, followed by Russell and Norris. Leclerc, despite leading for a while, ended up in fifth place. Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll, and Yuki Tsunoda followed behind them. The Red Bull team struggled during the session, with their cars outside of the top ten due to balance issues.
