Norris sets lightning pace ahead of Piastri in incident-filled FP1

Cloudy skies hung over the Baku City Circuit as teams and drivers got their weekends underway, but the threat of rain looked to be steering clear of proceedings.

Five minutes was all it took for the first yellow flags to come out after the Sauber of Gabriel Bortoleto locked up and went down the escape road of turn 3.

Oscar Piastri's practice session then ended abruptly, with a power unit issue forcing him back into the garage after just five minutes of running, with plenty of work for the McLaren mechanics to do.

Just ten minutes after Piastri's issue, some debris fell off Carlos Sainz's Williams after he ran over the kerb at turns 16 and 17, forcing the red flag to come out and suspend the session with Norris, Russell and Leclerc leading proceedings.

The out-of-place kerb at turns 16 and 17 then resulted in a suspension to the session for just over 25 minutes as the Baku marshals repaired the circuit damage, with no running taking place despite it being yellow flag conditions.

Once the session got back underway, McLaren's fine work in the garage saw Piastri come back out onto the track, with the soft tyre being the tyre of choice for the whole grid, as it was in the first part of the incident-filled session.

Norris led the way with a 1.43.747 before the session was halted, with Max Verstappen the only driver to get within a tenth of a second during the second part of the session.

However, the Brit then showed the superior pace that he and McLaren have over the rest of the grid, setting a 1.42.704 with just over 11 minutes left to go, just over a second clear of Verstappen and Piastri.

A brielf yellow flag then came out for Lewis Hamilton down in P9, clipping the wall and getting a puncture as a result, while teammate Leclerc jumped up to P2 with a 1.43.256.

Russell then saw himself go up into the top three, with a 1.43.421 being seven-tenths off the pace of the flying Norris up at the front.

However, the returning Piastri then made his move into P2, three-tenths behind his teammate but finding two-tenths more pace that Leclerc in P3.

Russell took P4, while Alex Albon in the Williams was the best of the rest in P5, ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and Verstappen in P6 and P7, respectively.

Carlos Sainz dismissed his earlier damage to take P8 when the chequered flag fell, with the Racing Bulls of Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson rounding out the top ten.