Ricciardo SHOCKS by finishing fastest in first free practice in Bahrain

Daniel Ricciardo has finished fastest in the first free practice session for the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix. The Visa Cash App RB car is fitted with more parts from the 2023  RB19 this season, but the hour in Bahrain is not representative for the rest of the weekend. Three-time World Champion Max Verstappen had some negative feedback on the radio but still spent time at the top of the leaderboard.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri rounded out the top three, which is a promising sign for the British team, who don't expect the Bahrain International Circuit to be amongst their best in 2024. Ricciardo and teammate Yuki Tsunoda are set to engage in a tense duel this season as they push for Red Bull's second seat. On this occasion, the Japanese driver finished three-tenths down in P4. Verstappen finished sixth fastest, with Russell and Leclerc following closely behind. 

Busy track

The first session of the weekend takes place under sunlight. The meaningful sessions will take place underneath the floodlights, so the first 60 minutes of the weekend isn't the most representative. Despite that fact, the track was busy immediately. Plenty of cars carried aero rakes to gather more data following the (around) 24 hours of testing last week. 

Zhou reported some brake issues on the radio and pitted to get those fixed. Aside from that, it was an uneventful start in terms of issues. Especially considering the strong wind gusts, which engineers were keen to remind their drivers about. In the early part of the session, the boys had their fun until Verstappen came out and went six-tenths faster on the medium tyres.

McLaren were the first to introduce the soft tyres. As a result, both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri jumped to the top of the leaderboard. Visa Cash App RB started their first teammate duel when they put on the soft tyres. Yuki Tsunoda went third fastest, but Ricciardo improved on that by three-tenths. The two drivers will be trying to prove themselves to get the second Red Bull seat should Perez not be retained by Christian Horner's team.

At turn one, a few drivers ran wide around the halfway stage, including George Russell and Lance Stroll. The British driver rejoined the track, as did Stroll, but the Canadian produced a lot more tyre smoke. Long runs took place towards the end of the session. It was a quiet hour for Haas. Both Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg finished around five seconds down on the fastest time and around 2-3 seconds down on 18th place.