2026 Barcelona-Catalunya GP Practice: FP1, FP2 and FP3, Plus the Rookie Session

Friday and Saturday running

George Russell set the pace in Free Practice 1 with a 1:16.363, two tenths clear of Oscar Piastri, with Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari^[1]. The order barely separated the top three teams all session.

Lando Norris answered in FP2, edging Russell by nine thousandths of a second, with Piastri third and Antonelli fifth, a reminder of how tightly McLaren and Mercedes were matched into the weekend^[4].

Russell then topped FP3 on Saturday morning ahead of Piastri and Leclerc, carrying the pace that would convert into pole a few hours later^[2].

The rookie session: seven stand-ins in FP1

FP1 doubled as a mandatory rookie outing. Seven race drivers stepped aside so a young driver could take the car, part of Formula 1's requirement that teams hand free-practice running to rookies through the season^[3].

The seven who ran, and the drivers they replaced^[3]:

• Frederik Vesti for Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)
• Leonardo Fornaroli for Lando Norris (McLaren)
• Dino Beganovic for Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)
• Paul Aron for Nico Hulkenberg (Audi)
• Colton Herta for Sergio Perez (Cadillac)
• Ayumu Iwasa for Isack Hadjar (Red Bull)
• Luke Browning for Alex Albon (Williams)

Leonardo Fornaroli was the best-placed of the rookies in the FP1 order, a useful marker for a driver inside the McLaren pipeline^[3].

:::analysis Confidence: Confirmed. Session-topping drivers, the FP2 margin, and the seven rookie line-ups are confirmed by Formula 1's own session reports and rookie preview. Practice pace is indicative, not predictive: teams run different fuel loads and tyre compounds, so read these orders as form signals rather than a grid. :::