MON­TRE­AL, Cana­da – Lewis Hamil­ton and Mer­cedes team­mate George Rus­sell were among a small group of dri­vers that got no time on the track be­fore a closed cir­cuit TV (CCTV) is­sue brought the first prac­tice ses­sion of the Cana­di­an Grand Prix to a pre­ma­ture close on Fri­day.

Or­gan­is­ers said the sec­ond prac­tice ses­sion at the Cir­cuit Gilles Vil­leneuve will start half-hour ear­li­er and ex­tend­ed by the same length of time to 90 min­utes af­ter the CCTV is­sue meant there was lim­it­ed run­ning in the open­ing hour.

Hamil­ton, the British race car dri­ver with Grena­di­an her­itage, and Rus­sell, as well as Al­phaTau­ri dri­ver Yu­ki Tsun­o­da, Lan­do Nor­ris of McLaren, the Williams duo of Alex Al­bon and Lo­gan Sargeant, and Pierre Gasly and Es­te­ban Ocon in the two Alpines were un­able to get on­to the track and set a time.

Valt­teri Bot­tas topped the timesheets dur­ing the ses­sion that had been halt­ed af­ter Gasly suf­fered a me­chan­i­cal is­sue.

With clouds cov­er­ing the cir­cuit, and rain in the air, the dri­vers quick­ly filed out on­to the track and looked to make the most of the dri­er con­di­tions, with many eval­u­at­ing their up­grades.

Pro­ceed­ings were soon halt­ed af­ter the red flag was waved due to Gasly stop­ping on track af­ter be­ing un­able to switch gears.

With Ocon’s car still in the garage be­ing worked on by the me­chan­ics, it marked an un­wel­comed start to the ses­sion for Alpine.

Gasly’s car was still be­ing moved when the de­ci­sion to end the ses­sion was tak­en due to is­sues with the CCTV and safe­ty rea­sons with less than 10 min­utes on the clock.

Bot­tas re­turned a quick­est lap time of a one minute, 18.728 sec­onds in his three loops of the cir­cuit and that was enough for the Al­fa Romeo dri­ver to top the timesheets, ahead of the As­ton Mar­tins of Lance Stroll and Fer­nan­do Alon­so.

Ser­gio Perez and Max Ver­stap­pen end­ed the ses­sion fourth and fifth re­spec­tive­ly, for Red Bull, ahead of Os­car Pi­as­tri in sixth for McLaren.

Haas pair Kevin Mag­nussen and Nico Hulken­berg were sev­enth and eighth re­spec­tive­ly, ahead of the oth­er Al­fa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu.

Car­los Sainz round­ed out the top 10 in front of his Fer­rari run­ning mate, Charles Leclerc.

Ny­ck de Vries was the slow­est of the 12 dri­vers that made it on­to the track to set a time.

CMC