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British GP
F1 British GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP1 and qualifying
All of Friday's action ahead of the F1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone
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Those in danger of dropping out in this session are Ricciardo, Latifi, Schumacher, Stroll and Mazepin. Vettel is on the bubble in P15 with three minutes to go.
Good evening Fernando Alonso. The Alpine driver has sneaked up to P4 in this session to look fairly assured of his Q2 progression only behind Verstappen, Hamilton and Bottas.
Ooh, Leclerc gets his Ferrari twitchy coming out of the chicane and has to catch a snap of oversteer before going wide at Club corner.
Ocon, with a new Alpine chassis for this weekend, puts in a solid lap to go P7 as Sainz goes P4 having rather messed up his first lap.
Stopwatch
Hamilton completes that lap to go top with a 1m27.160s - but not for long as Verstappen beats him with 1m26.751s.
All the talk about the 2022 cars provides a reminder of how incredible this generation of F1 cars are over a single lap. Hamilton's Merc lifts up dust on the edge of the kerb coming around Luffield and then keeps it planted through Copse.
Stopwatch
Lando Norris has, as he puts in a 1m28.277s to go top out of the early runners. Both Aston Martins and Alpine's Ocon still yet to venture out.
Opening lap times coming up, let's see who has nailed it early after just one hour of practice.
No messing about today as there's a rush for pit exit at the start of the session - usually it is just the Haas drivers who nip out early on.
Lights green
Q1 is go - rush hour at Silverstone!
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Weather watch: A typical summer evening in Northamptonshire... warm sunshine, a cooling breeze with the current air temperature at 25.2oC. Prime BBQ weather.
And finally, just to clarify, this evening’s qualifying sets the grid for Saturday's sprint qualifying race. The results of that will order the final grid for Sunday's British GP. Simple enough.
Will it shake up the order? We'll find out over the next hour and a bit. It is the traditional qualifying format of Q1, Q2 and Q3 up next, starting at 6pm with only a minor twist of all drivers needing to use the soft tyres for each session.
But it is worth pointing out teams have, sort of, had a practice go at this twice in the last 12 months: At the Nurburgring when Friday practice was washed out entirely and at Imola when it was condensed into a two-day event.
It must also feel very unusual for the teams and drivers too, usually they are busy crunching the numbers after Friday practice but instead they are making final preparations for qualifying after just 60 minutes of running.
Well, we have got to say, starting qualifying coverage at this time on a Friday feels rather strange, but rather nice. Shall we?
Verstappen is looking good to draw level with British world champions John Surtees and Jenson Button (plus Riccardo Patrese) in the all-time pole stakes later on, but all bets are off behind. We'll be back shortly before qualifying at 6pm - see you then.
Here's the full report if you missed anything from FP1: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/british-gp-fp1-report/6631401/
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As F1 team Twitter admins are helpfully reminding us, there's precious little time to turn things around before qualifying at 6pm local time. Perhaps the team that has most cause for concern at present is Mercedes - with surely more pace to come from Norris when he tries softs, will there be a repeat of Austria where the McLaren driver plays spoiler and allows Verstappen to clear off?
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Aston Martin appears to have Q3-contending pace, but a low-on-confidence Stroll will need some encouragement to get on terms with Vettel, who finished the session an encouraging P7.
Verstappen appears to be riding his wave of confidence from the hattrick of wins at Paul Ricard, Styria and Austria into the weekend with healthy gaps over team-mate Perez, who couldn't beat Verstappen's best medium time on his own soft run.
What did we learn amid that frantic session? Fortunately, everybody kept it clean and there were no off-track indiscretions meaning costly trips to the pitlane for repairs, although Sainz did have a spin and Russell suffered damage to his left wing-mirror running wide over the kerbs at Copse.
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Significantly, Norris's time was set on mediums, which suggests he will be a bit closer to Verstappen come qualifying. We're not sure that he did try the red compound rubber in that session, so may have a bit of learning to do come qualifying, but will have more knowledge of the medium tyre for the sprint race as a consequence.
Checkered flag
There's the checkered flag, and it is Verstappen who ends the session on top with that blistering time of 1m27.035s. As it was in Austria, it's Lando Norris who is second-quickest, with Hamilton third for Mercedes.
Verstappen spent the end of the session lapping in the 1m32s on softs, suggesting he's trying out how the car might feel at the start of the GP.
Not long left in the session now, it appears we've had the improvements we're going to see with nobody else on course to improve.
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Alas it's not an improvement for Stroll, who backs off at the end of his lap and allows Verstappen through. "Low on confidence right now," he tells race engineer Bradley Joyce on the radio.
Stroll has fallen back to P18, but is on soft tyres and on course to improve with green sectors lighting up the timing screens for the Aston Martin driver.
A good lap from Vettel puts him P7 in the Aston Martin, a 1m28.062s for the two-time Silverstone winner. Meanwhile Bottas improves, but only one place by moving ahead of Sainz to P5 on a 1m27.897s.
It's a 1m27.828s for Leclerc, who moves above his team-mate and Bottas to take fourth, while Ocon has moved up to P9 just behind Perez and Ricciardo.
Sainz now splits the Mercedes with a 1m27.923s with a purple first sector. It's P4 for the Spaniard, but still slower than Norris who is continuing to run on the medium tyres.
"Seven tenths? Where does that come from?" gasps Hamilton when informed of the gap to Verstappen. It'll be interesting to see whether any engine mode trickery was at play on that Red Bull lap, because that is a yawning gap by 2021 standards.
Perez has done his soft-tyre running and has now switched back on to the hard, so we're unlikely to see any further improvements in this session from the Mexican.
It's only third and fourth for Mercedes on the softs, Hamilton logging a 1m27.815s which is just 0.001s behind Norris on the medium. Bottas is a further tenth back in the 1m27.9s bracket.
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