Alpha Tauri driver Daniel Ricciardo will miss the Dutch Grand Prix after breaking his hand in a crash in Friday practice at Zandvoort.

Alpha Tauri said Ricciardo had broken a metacarpal bone in his left hand. No information was given on the likely length of his absence from the car.

Ricciardo lost control at the banked Hugenholz corner trying to avoid the crashed McLaren of Oscar Piastri.

His injury means Lawson, who made two practice appearances last season, will make his F1 debut in trying circumstances.

The 21-year-old New Zealander, who is racing in Japan’s Super Formula series this season, has not driven Alpha Tauri’s 2023 car and will have to qualify on Saturday afternoon after just one hour’s running in the final practice session, which starts at 11:30 local time (10:30 BST).

Ricciardo returned to F1 just two races ago for Alpha Tauri as a replacement for Dutchman Nyck de Vries, who was dropped after 10 races of his rookie season as a result of disappointing performances.

Ricciardo himself was dropped by McLaren at the end of last season a year before the scheduled end of his contract after struggling to match team-mate Lando Norris.

The Australian, who has won eight grands prix, looks almost certain to miss next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix and potentially more races beyond that.

However, Lance Stroll raced for Aston Martin with two broken wrists at the start of this season so an early return for Ricciardo cannot be ruled out.

He lost control at the banked Hugenholz corner when he saw Piastri’s crashed McLaren too late. The 21-year-old had lost control himself moments before and his car was broadside across the track.

What else happened in the session?

Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris headed Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in Friday practice. The Briton lapped 0.023 seconds faster than the championship leader, who had a messy session with traffic on one fast lap and a mistake on another.

Williams driver Alex Albon impressed with third fastest time, ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s upgraded Mercedes.

Hamilton said after the session: “The Red Bulls are a little bit quick, as always, so I don’t necessarily anticipate we will easily be able to beat them, but I think we’re going to be close.”

Ferrari were struggling all day and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso did not produce a representative lap time.

The quickest Ferrari was Charles Leclerc down in 11th place, 0.585secs off the pace, while his team-mate Carlos Sainz was 16th.

The Spaniard sat out the first session as Ferrari test driver Robert Shwarzmann was given a turn in the car and then had two incidents in the second – misjudging the entry to Turn 11 and skating through the gravel on a fast lap and then running wide at the penultimate corner during his race run.

Alonso, who had been second fastest in the Aston Martin in the morning session, was only 10th fastest in the afternoon over one lap.

Norris’s pace in the McLaren underlined the progress the team have made with an upgrade in Austria at the start of last month, since when on average they have been the second fastest team in qualifying on average.

However, even if McLaren can challenge Verstappen in qualifying, it would be unwise to expect a threat to the local hero in the race. Verstappen was comfortably faster on the long runs – by 0.2secs over Norris and by 0.5secs over Leclerc comparing their runs on the soft tyre.

Verstappen said: “We have a few things we want to improve but even on the long run the car was handling quite well. So overall I think it was quite a good day.”

He was heard to complain about “weird” behaviour in medium-speed corners during the session, but said in explanation afterwards: “Particular corners I was not that happy with the balance so it’s all about trying to sort that out a little bit more.

“I still feel good. The car has a lot of potential to have a good day tomorrow but we just have to fine tune a few things and then I am pretty confident we can be ahead.”