Verstappen leads Baku GP practice

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen topped the sole practice session at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a car fire for Pierre Gasly truncated the hour by almost 15 minutes.

The Dutchman had only just taken top spot when Gasly’s Alpine started smoking on just his eighth tour of the Baku City Circuit, and before long flames were visible from the engine cover.

The Frenchman parked at the top of the hill at Turn 12 for marshals to douse his car in foam, but the extinguishers did little to stop the thick brown smoke billowing freely from the roll hoop airbox.

A red flag was called for the officials to bring the internal blaze under control and recover the car, which the team said had been set alight by a hydraulic leak.

The suspension was also opportune to collect Kevin Magnussen’s Haas car, which had stopped with a hydraulics failure of its own in the run-off zone at the first corner.

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It took around 13 minutes to get the session restarted, but it wasn’t until the final 10 minutes that teams broke out the soft tires.

Verstappen had been the comfortable leader on the medium tire, but early on the softs teammate Sergio Perez pipped him to the top spot before Charles Leclerc rotated into first place for Ferrari.