Bottas pips Hamilton in tight F1 Belgian GP first practice

Valtteri Bottas headed Mercedes Formula 1 teammate Lewis Hamilton in a close opening practice session for the Belgian Grand Prix.

Bottas, who heads into the weekend 37 points down on Hamilton in third place in the 2020 championship standings, lapped the Spa-Francorchamps circuit with a 1m44.493s to edge out his teammate by just 0.069s.

It was not all plain-sailing on his 31st birthday for the Finn however, as Bottas ended the session with a front-left puncture on his W11 after he was seen locking up into the final chicane, shortly after he was told he was doing a good job managing his tyres around the 7.004km track.

In a tight first 90-minute practice session, Max Verstappen was third-fastest and only 0.081s off the pace of the Mercedes pair with an encouraging showing for Red Bull.

The two Racing Points of Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll were next up in fourth and fifth, while Alex Albon finished sixth in his Red Bull, some five-tenths adrift of Bottas’ benchmark.

Just two-tenths separated the Renault and McLaren drivers who made up the rest of the top 10, with Esteban Ocon heading Carlos Sainz, teammate Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris on a lap that was just a fraction slower than Albon’s effort.

The AlphaTauri’s were line-a-stern in P11 and P12 as Daniil Kvyat headed teammate Pierre Gasly by less than a tenth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who put his Alfa Romeo 13th.

Ferrari carried out a mysterious run plan in first practice as neither Sebastian Vettel (P14) nor Charles Leclerc (P15) opted to go for a fast lap on the Soft tyre with the Scuderia appearing to focus its attentions on race set-up.

The Williams pair came next as Nicholas Latifi outpaced teammate George Russell by a tenth to take 16th in the order.

The Haas duo were anchored to P18 and P19 in the timesheets after the team was forced to change the power units in Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean’s VF-20s after detecting issues on both cars.

It marked an awful start to the weekend for the American outfit, with Magnussen and Grosjean only able to complete a total of three laps between them in FP1 before the problems cropped up.

Antonio Giovinazzi was the third driver who failed to set a lap time with an apparent issue in his Alfa Romeo C38 which left him restricted to P20 with only two laps on the board.

FULL OPENING PRACTICE RESULTS FOR THE 2020 F1 BELGIAN GRAND PRIX.