Fernando Alonso rolled back the years to set the early pace for Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix.
The 44-year-old Aston Martin driver saw off Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by 0.150 seconds at the Marina Bay Street Circuit with Max Verstappen third.
Four-time world champion Verstappen ended the one-hour running 0.276 seconds off the pace, while Lewis Hamilton took fourth for Ferrari. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished fifth and sixth respectively for McLaren.
Alonso last won a race 12 years ago and took the second of his consecutive world championships back in 2006.
Both Alonso and Aston Martin have endured a troubled season with the Spaniard scoring just 30 points so far, while the British-based team are currently seventh of the 10 constructors.
But it was Alonso whose lap of 1:31.116 was good enough to see him move to the top of the leaderboard. His teammate Lance Stroll finished 18th. 1.5 seconds further back.
However, times in opening practice in the City State cannot always be taken at face value, with the second session — which, like qualifying on Saturday, starts at 21:00 local time (14:00 BST) — due to offer a more representative pecking order.
Piastri showed a chink in his championship armour at the previous round in Azerbaijan when he crashed out of qualifying and then in the race, too.
Here, he bemoaned the handling of his “under-steery” McLaren and was 0.365 seconds slower than Alonso. Norris, 25 points behind Piastri in the standings after he crossed the line in seventh in Baku, was further back. He finished 0.582 seconds adrift.
George Russell, who is recovering from a virus, finished 11th for Mercedes, one second back, while Alex Albon was unable to complete a competitive lap after he suffered a brake failure in the opening minutes of the session, with smoke billowing out of the rear of his Williams as he sat stationary in the pits.
