The Friday in F1 Australian GP was a hectic one where the field was tightly packed giving no clear pecking order, leaving too many questions for Saturday.
It was not a slow Friday in F1 Australian GP. The teams and drivers were busy all around to collect as much data for the weekend ahead which remains a question mark due to the weather prediction of rain for Sunday. They have to pin on a set-up which will aide them the best for mixed conditions.
The pecking order is still not 100%, even though McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes are expected to be up there. The Friday, though, brought Williams and Visa Cash App RB in the mix too. It remains to be seen if the two teams can maintain their pace for the rest of the weekend.
As for the Top 4 teams, it is tight between McLaren and Ferrari where Lando Norris topped FP1 and Charles Leclerc did so in FP2. Both seem cautiously optimistic and positive, but are not letting things go. Oscar Piastri had a decent outing too, but Lewis Hamilton had to dig deep.
He is still in the learning phase of the car and Ferrari as a team, as he struggled with understeer and was few tenths off Leclerc’s pace. But he felt comfortable enough to be ahead of Red Bull and Mercedes, who had Max Verstappen and George Russell in a much better position than their teammates.
Both Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Liam Lawson ended up outside the Top 10 in both the sessions. They felt good in the car, but just lacked pace overall. The Dutchman too felt good on the balance side, but didn’t have enough legs, while the Brit felt different on the different compounds they ran.
Norris: “So-so. I think it’s been a good start to the weekend. We’ve got a good baseline, but certainly not happy or confident with the car in terms of finding the best balance and being consistent enough, especially on low fuel. I feel like [on the] high fuel, I felt good, [but] just low fuel, similar to Bahrain – too many inconsistencies, too many problems, so a bit of a struggle. I don’t know what positive means, but I think we’ll be strong. I think, like we said the whole time, we’ll be strong, Ferrari will be strong, Mercedes [too]. I don’t know, we’ll wait and see.”
Hamilton: “For me, I think it’s a little bit early as I just continue to get to learn the car, but never say never. I’ll still give it everything I’ve got tomorrow. I’m just not putting too much pressure on. I’m going to try to enjoy it. I’ve got some pace to find. I know where to find it. It’s just about going out there and doing it and just building. P1 was a little bit messy. P2 was definitely starting to look a little bit better. Also, I’m still getting used to all of the setup changes. I don’t have them on call like I used to have with Mercedes. Where I’d been there so long, I knew exactly all the setup changes, so I’m still working through understanding what tools we can use, and it’s interesting you can see with Charles, he just knows because he’s been here for such a long time.”
Leclerc: “I want to be cautious; let’s wait and see. But it’s right to say that after a day like this, we are looking forward to tomorrow and we want to target pole position. For now, it is too early to say. I don’t think we’ve seen the real pace of everybody yet and I think some teams might hide their game a bit more than others. But for sure, McLaren is up there. I think Red Bull might be struggling a little bit more for now, but you never know with them, and especially with Max, you can never rule them out. For sure, they will be in the fight. Mercedes look strong as well, so it is going to be a good fight, I’m sure.”
Verstappen: “To be honest, the balance wasn’t even completely out. No massive or major problems. But somehow, the grip was not coming alive. I was just struggling on all four tyres, really, in Sector 1 and the last sector. That means, of course, that were are not really up there at the moment. The problem is that it’s not really like I have major balance problems. I think it will be a bit hard to fix. It’s also nothing that I didn’t expect when I arrived here. I’m not positively or negatively surprised with the pace we are showing. We just have to make sure that we find a bit more pace, but at the moment we are definitely lacking a bit to fight up front.”
Lawson: “[I’m] comfortable [in the car] – just too slow. We obviously have a lot of work to do overnight. Day one, on a new track, we were expecting to have some work to do, but probably not this much. We’ll work on it overnight and then try and improve it for tomorrow. Not really. I think if we knew that we’d know how to fix it as well. In general, just grip when we need to use it on that short run, but then in general our long run pace was slow as well. We’ll work on it.”
Russell: “It was a really up and down day because every time that we had the medium or the hard tyre on, we were right in the top two of the timesheets – every lap felt good and I was confident. Then we put the soft on and we didn’t go much quicker. Clearly, there is a bit of pace in the car and it’s just about getting the most out of the tyre, so we need to understand why that is. Let’s see what we can achieve overnight. If the session had stopped after the hard tyre and if the session had stopped after the medium tyre in FP1, I’d have said definitely, we’re there or thereabouts. But obviously, you don’t qualify on the hard or medium tyre, you qualify on the soft tyre, and we don’t seem so competitive on that one. I’m sure we’ll find some improvements tonight.”
Antonelli: “It was a positive first day of the season. Overall, I was pleased with how everything went. I’m getting more and more confident with each lap and continue to build my learning. The long run in FP2 was good and gives us a strong platform for the rest of the weekend. We’ve got some work to do on the single lap to find a bit more performance; that is mainly linked to getting the tyres in the right window and something we will focus on improving overnight. We’ve got plenty of data to work with to do that ahead of Saturday. It is slightly too early to make any predictions on our relative performance. We don’t know what the other teams are doing, and we were offset on tyre strategy today. The car was feeling good though and we will see what we can do in Qualifying tomorrow.”
As mentioned above, Williams and Visa Cash App RB looked to be in a good shape, where Carlos Sainz even managed to finish second in FP1. He was outside the Top 10 in FP2 but didn’t improve on the soft tyre run, setting the exact time on medium as teammate Alexander Albon on the soft.
The Thai had brake issues in FP1 but was in a better shape in FP2. As for their rivals, both Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar looked to be in a much better shape than what they showed in pre-season testing. They showed Top 10 pace especially on one lap, but they are wary of the race trim.
The Alpine pair seems to be closest to them with Jack Doohan bettering Pierre Gasly in both the sessions to have a good start considering the axe rumours on his head. The Aston Martin pair had a so-so run, where Fernando Alonso ended up in the Top 10 in FP1, Lance Stroll did so in FP2.
Alonso seemed to be already fed up with Friday questions. Both Sauber and Haas were at the back, but Nico Hulkenberg managed to put the former in the Top 10 in FP2. Gabriel Bortoleto could see-through his programme, as did Esteban Ocon but lacked pace. A mistake from Oliver Bearman in FP1 cost him dearly as he missed whole of FP2 and is on the backfoot already.
Sainz: “Definitely a positive Friday for us, with FP1 quite strong. FP2, we didn’t manage to find performance on the soft tyre, so we need to look into this ahead of Qualifying tomorrow. If we manage to unlock some performance on the softs, then I think we can be competitive. The field is extremely tight, with various teams doing some very fast laps, so I think tomorrow it will be all about executing a clean Qualifying and seeing where that takes us.”
Tsunoda: “Well, obviously it’s a good start, for the first day. I’m sure other teams will pick up the pace tomorrow, in qualifying especially. It definitely looks good. Inside the car, there’s not that much huge, I would say, outstanding [with] the balance and whatever. A happy day in the office, but obviously we just have to definitely keep focused and keep digging [out] the performance. I think it’s going to be very, very tight in the field, so even if we squeeze that last five hundred milliseconds or whatever, that’ll be quite big. Definitely Williams, I would say. Williams seem fast. I think in FP2, I’m sure we’re doing different things, I feel like. Alpine as well. Those two teams that I mentioned will be pretty quick, but yeah, so far we’re leading, so at the same time we’ll take it as a positive, always looking forward. We’ll push 100% tomorrow.”
Hadjar: “To be fair, after the first lap I was really comfortable in the car in FP1. Foot to the floor and we just went step by step. Obviously, it’s really nice to have Yuki alongside me to compare and progress quite fast as well. I don’t know how the other teams are going to react tomorrow, but the most important is that I feel comfy. I was surprised with more my own performance than the car. In FP1 I was straight on the pace and I just felt comfortable on the long run and the short run. It’s not bold to say Q2, but I’d like to go to Q3, that’s for sure.”
Alonso: “It’s always good to get into the first Grand Prix weekend of a new season. We’re continuing to learn about the AMR25, and we tried a few different things today with the setup to inform our direction for the rest of the weekend. Of course, it’s only Friday so there’s lots to study and analyse, which we’ll be doing this evening ahead of Qualifying. We come here because it’s mandatory. But there is nothing really to talk [about]. We just jumped out of the car as usual. It will be 24 Fridays like now that you can ask anything, I will not answer at all. I need to review everything now with my team and privately discuss what we did today. We did laps, the car goes, the engine is alive, the brakes are okay, the gearbox is changing gears up and down, so we’re good.”
Doohan: “My first few laps in front of my home crowd were amazing, lots of good emotions which I will be channelling through the whole weekend. Today was a good day of learning across the two sessions, we are trying lots of different things to build out our balance and make sure we are in a good place for tomorrow. The car ran well in both sessions, and we were able to maximise our running with the conditions that we faced. We will debrief as a team and discuss what we can do in Free Practice 3 to put ourselves in a good position ahead of Qualifying.”
Hulkenberg: “It has been a positive first Friday for us as a team. We changed the setup quite a bit between FP1 and FP2 and the resulting feedback turned out to be positive. It didn’t feel that easy, though the lap times on low fuel look ok. In the end tomorrow’s qualifying will tell us where we are compared to the competition. We managed to gather a lot of information which we process overnight and obviously we’ll try to improve by tomorrow. Right now, it’s about taking it step by step and optimizing the car session by session.”
Bearman: “The guys did a great job to try to get the car back out but we just ran out of time. I just had a small mistake at Turn 10, which put me a bit wide and out there it’s very bumpy and I, unfortunately, lost the car. It’s not over. I struggled a little bit, but I really felt confident in the car – maybe too much. I really felt at home and nice in the car. It was building up really nicely, and the mistake was unfortunate. It’s by no means over. FP3 is a long session and then into qualifying. The race will be a bit of a roll of the dice it looks like at the moment.”
Here’s how FP1 in F1 Australian GP panned out
Here’s how FP2 in F1 Australian GP panned out
