2025 Azerbaijan GP FP1: Norris leads McLaren one-two

The 2025 F1 World Championship returned on Friday as cars hit the streets of Baku, and it was Lando Norris who stamped his authority early. The McLaren driver set the pace in Free Practice 1 of the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a time of 1:42.704, edging out team-mate Oscar Piastri by three-tenths of a second, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc slotted into third, half a second back.

After a two-week break, the session began at 12:30 local time under cloudy but dry conditions, with most drivers keen to get running straight away on the 6.003km Baku City Circuit. But it wasn’t long before the drama began. Norris was called back to the pits to remove a loose component cover, while Piastri was urged over the radio to back off and “avoid full load” as McLaren kept a watchful eye on his power unit. Elsewhere, Gabriel Bortoleto reminded everyone how green the surface was by going deep at Turn 3 in his Sauber, Alex Albon lost a mirror from his Williams, and George Russell reported the strange smell of “burning” inside his Mercedes cockpit.

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Just as Norris had taken control of the timesheets with a 1:43.747 on Pirelli’s soft tyres, the first red flag of the weekend was triggered. The culprit was Williams’ Carlos Sainz, who clipped the kerb at Turn 16, dislodging part of it and forcing marshals to carry out urgent repairs. At that point, Norris held sway over Russell—battling illness and heavy bottoming in the Mercedes—along with Leclerc and Verstappen.

When the session resumed with just 20 minutes left on the clock, the field scrambled to get through their programmes. McLaren mechanics had worked swiftly to resolve Piastri’s earlier concerns, sending the Australian back out to chase his team-mate. Norris immediately went faster again, lowering the benchmark to 1:42.704 and putting himself a full second clear of Verstappen. Hamilton, meanwhile, clipped the wall at Turn 5, limped back with front wing damage, and lost valuable track time.

The closing minutes delivered the final soft-tyre runs. Piastri jumped up to second with a lap three-tenths shy of Norris, while Leclerc—who has famously taken the last four Baku poles—lined up third, 0.552s back. Russell finished fourth in the lead Mercedes, just a thousandth behind the Ferrari, with Albon impressing in fifth despite thumping the wall late on. Verstappen could manage no better than seventh, the reigning four-time champion abandoning a flyer after running wide at Turn 15.

Behind them, Sainz recovered to make it two Williams cars inside the top 10, joined by the Racing Bulls of Liam Lawson and rookie Isack Hadjar—who also had a late excursion into the run-off—and Mercedes junior Kimi Antonelli. Nico Hülkenberg and Bortoleto sandwiched Hamilton’s Ferrari in positions 12 to 14, ahead of Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, Haas rookie Ollie Bearman, Lance Stroll, and Esteban Ocon. The Alpines of Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly rounded out the order.

2025 Azerbaijan GP FP1 Results

2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix FP1, 19 September 2025