The first practice session of the 2023 season ended with Red Bull on top of the timesheets as Sergio Perez set the fastest lap over Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in Free Practice 1 for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Perez’s lap of 1m 32.758s saw him shoot to the top on soft tyres with 30 minutes of the hour remaining, while Alonso’s soft-tyred lap put him second overall by four-tenths. Fellow two-time champion Max Verstappen was therefore bumped down to third overall, 0.617s off the pace set by his Red Bull team mate.

Lando Norris finished fourth overall for McLaren, while Charles Leclerc was the fastest driver on medium compounds in P5, 1.5s off the pace.