Brazil GP: Sergio Perez leads highly competitive Practice 1

Sergio Perez set the pace as just six-tenths covered the top 10 in Practice 1 at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

With just an hour of running before qualifying later on Friday, teams had plenty on their to-do list under sunny skies at Interlagos.

And Red Bull wasted little time going to the top of the timesheet as most opted for hard tyres for their first runs.

Then the soft compound was fitted and Perez pipped teammate Max Verstappen by just 0.008s to go fastest with a 1m11.853s.

Though his deficit was in the final sector, understeer in the slow-speed corners was the main complaint from the reigning world champion.

Charles Leclerc later split the two Bulls in his Ferrari, just 0.004s slower than pacesetter Perez.

A five-place grid penalty for a new ICE was confirmed for Carlos Sainz, who had a scare with Lando Norris en route to fourth, one-thousandth ahead of fifth-placed Lewis Hamilton.

George Russell completed a top-six covered by just 0.202s in the second Mercedes.

Sebastian Vettel led the midfield in seventh with Mick Schumacher an impressive eighth. One-thousandth separated Valtteri Bottas and Pierre Gasly at the tail-end of the top 10.

Fernando Alonso was ahead as the two Alpines sat 11th and 13th, either side of Alex Albon in 12th for Williams.

Lance Stroll took 14th, while McLaren had a difficult start to the weekend in 15th for Norris and slowest for Daniel Ricciardo.

Kevin Magnussen finished seven-tenths behind teammate Schumacher in 16th, followed by Nicholas Latifi in 17th.

Zhou Guanyu was 18th as he encountered Interlagos for the first time, as Yuki Tsunoda complained of a lack of grip in 19th.

Full results from Practice 1 can be seen below: