F1: Perez tops opening Monaco GP Practice

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, using the soft red tires, turned the fastest lap in opening practice for the Monaco GP in his Red Bull Honda. Perez, slowly coming to terms with his new Red Bull machine, turned a lap of 1m12.536s to nip the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz Jr. by 0.119s.

Third was the #33 Red Bull Honda of Max Verstappen, 0.112s behind his teammate, but on the harder medium Pirellis.

Pierre Gasly was 4th fastest in his AlphaTauri Honda on the soft red tires while a sandbagging Lewis Hamilton rounded out the top-5 for Mercedes on the medium rubber.

Lewis Hamilton will be on top when it counts

Traffic caused a fair amount of issues, a number of drivers kissed the wall and a few ran straight on at Turn 1. But only Leclerc was seriously hampered, a gearbox issue cutting his session very short indeed.

Practice 1 Results

POS	DRIVER	NAT.	TEAM	TIME
1	Sergio Perez	MEX	Red Bull Racing	1m12.487s
2	Carlos Sainz	ESP	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1m12.606s
3	Max Verstappen	NED	Red Bull Racing	1m12.648s
4	Pierre Gasly	FRA	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m12.929s
5	Lewis Hamilton	GBR	Mercedes AMG Petronas	1m12.995s
6	Valtteri Bottas	FIN	Mercedes AMG Petronas	1m13.131s
7	Lando Norris	GBR	McLaren F1 Team	1m13.236s
8	Sebastian Vettel	GER	Aston Martin Cognizant	1m13.732s
9	Yuki Tsunoda	JPN	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m13.746s
10	Kimi Raikkonen	FIN	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m14.081s
11	Lance Stroll	CAN	Aston Martin Cognizant	1m14.090s
12	Antonio Giovinazzi	ITA	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m14.106s
13	Fernando Alonso	ESP	Alpine F1 Team	1m14.205s
14	Nicholas Latifi	CAN	Williams Racing	1m14.268s
15	Daniel Ricciardo	AUS	McLaren F1 Team	1m14.281s
16	Esteban Ocon	FRA	Alpine F1 Team	1m14.320s
17	Nikita Mazepin	RUS	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m14.616s
18	Mick Schumacher	GER	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m14.801s
19	George Russell	GBR	Williams Racing	1m14.881s
20	Charles Leclerc	MON	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	No time set