Bottas leads Hamilton and Sainz in a wet first practice at the British Grand Prix

Valtteri Bottas led the first free practice session of the 2022 British Grand Prix at the Silverstone circuit.

Lewis Hamilton finished in second position, 0.532 seconds slower than the Finn. Carlos Sainz finished in third position at the end of the session.

The first free practice session of the British Grand Prix at the Silverstone Circuit started with air temperatures at 16 degrees C and track temperatures at 26 degrees C. The track was wet and the drivers went out on the intermediate tyres.

The Pirelli tyre choice at this race is the white-striped hard compound tyres (C1), yellow-striped medium compound tyres (C2), and red-striped soft compound tyres (C3), the hardest range of compounds in the Pirelli tyre range.

The teams have arrived for the tenth race of the season with a slew of new updates and the practice sessions will be used to test the performance of the new parts. The damp conditions at the start of the session made it difficult for the teams to execute their planned programs.

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team drivers, Hamilton and George Russell, were the first drivers on the track for the installation laps.

Charles Leclerc was the first driver to set a timed lap with a lap time of 1m43.801s. Sainz went faster with a lap of 1m42.967s, 0.834 seconds faster than Leclerc.

As the track started drying out, more drivers set timed laps. With thirty minutes to go, only nine drivers had times on the board.

Valtteri Bottas split the two Ferrari drivers at the top with Mick Schumacher and Zhou Guanyu were in fourth and fifth positions.

With under ten minutes to go, six laps were the most laps recorded by each driver. Hamilton went out and did a few laps to get aerodynamic data and then recorded a lap time of 1m49.476s to slot into seventh position.

With three minutes to go, Bottas went to the top of the time charts with a lap time of 1m42.249s. Hamilton came out on the soft compound tyres and slotted into second position, 0.532 seconds slower than Bottas.

With less than 2 minutes to go, Lance Stroll was in the gravel at Copse corner and brought out the red flags that ended the session.

The first practice session saw limited running and if the weather improves the afternoon practice session will see a lot of activity.

2022 British Grand Prix First Practice (FP1) Results: