Their laps, separated by 0.116 seconds, were set on different compounds of tyres at opposite ends of the session. Verstappen’s time was set early in the session on the hardest compound while Leclerc was on soft tyres late on. Leclerc was about 0.6secs off Verstappen when he ran the hard tyre on his first run. Leclerc won the first race of the season in Bahrain last weekend after a close fight with Verstappen, who retired from second place with three laps to go with a loss of fuel pressure. They said they expect the first engine to be put back into his pool of engines once it had been investigated back in Europe.

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