Listen to this article The Briton, having qualified in 11th for the first sprint race of the season, which will take place on Saturday afternoon, remained at the top of the leaderboard with his 1m19.457s. That gave him a slender 0.08s cushion to Perez, while Ferrari’s Leclerc was 0.2s in arrears. Perez comfortably led the way in the first half of the hour-long session, as he kept whittling away at his personal best lap on the red-walled soft tyres to maintain his place atop the times. It was Lance Stroll who first emerged onto the fully dry track, opting for a set of mediums as he was swiftly joined by Haas’ Mick Schumacher and the Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu. Lando Norris set an early banker to take top spot with a 1m23.821s before Lewis Hamilton brought the benchmark down to 1m21.880s on a set of mediums after eight minutes. But then it was Perez who moved and, for a large chunk of the early afternoon run, remained at the head of the lead …