Norris is ahead of Piastri in practice in Azerbaijan

In the first practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Lando Norris led Oscar Piastri to a McLaren one-two.

The timesheets looked the same, with Charles Leclerc of Ferrari in third and George Russell of Mercedes in fourth. This was a busy hour.

A loose curb caused a red flag that stopped the race for roughly 20 minutes. This reduced the damage that an engine problem could have done to Piastri.

On his way to the 12th quickest time, Lewis Hamilton hit the wall in his Ferrari, which broke his front wing and gave him a front-left flat tire.

A strip of rubber fell away under the curb at Turn 16, the last circuit before the long pit straight, which caused the delay.

While authorities worked to rectify the issue, the session was put on hold. This gave McLaren time to fix a power unit fault that had been found on Piastri's car during his first lap out of the pits.

The Australian, who was 31 points ahead of Norris in the title, only did 13 laps in the session, while the Briton did 18.

Norris was 0.310 seconds faster than Piastri, and Leclerc was 0.552 seconds slower.

Max Verstappen of Red Bull seemed like he might be in the fight at the front on a lap late in the afternoon, but he locked up a wheel in the tight downhill braking zone into Turn 15 and crashed into the escape road.

Verstappen was the seventh fastest at the end of the session, behind Alex Albon from Williams and Yuki Tsunoda from Red Bull.

Carlos Sainz of Williams was the eighth fastest, ahead of Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar's two Racing Bulls. His car knocked the rubber off the Turn 16 curb.

Hamilton's accident happened at Turn Three, where he hit the inside curb because he misjudged his turn-in. He had been roughly 0.2 seconds behind Leclerc up to that moment, but he finished the workout 0.831 seconds behind his teammate.