The Saturday in F1 Australian GP was two side of coin for Red Bull and others inside them with Mercedes outdoing immediate rivals.
After his perils in Saudi Arabia, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen bounced back well in F1 Australian GP with a solid pole despite some troubles getting the tyres switched on. He didn’t have much competition after teammate Sergio Perez dumped it in Q1.
Already in FP3, Perez was not having a good time and it continue in qualifying but not for long as he went off at Turn 3 and couldn’t get out of the gravel which ended his run. The Mexican radioed about their problem not being fixed which was likely the brakes.
His title charge will get a hit considering that he will have to come back from last but his misery allowed Mercedes to get into their game as the cooler conditions assisted them to beat Aston Martin, Ferrari and Alpine to slow themselves in the first two rows.
They are still not where they want to be but the one-lap pace in Melbourne did a good enough job. Ferrari were, though, not too happy after another mishap-filled session where Charles Leclerc were left with one lap due to rain prediction without much prep.
He also found Carlos Sainz on his lap, who gave way to multiple cars thinking they were on quick laps when they weren’t. Aston Martin, meanwhile, were there or thereabouts, as they didn’t show the raw pacer that they have had in the first two rounds.
Verstappen: “The last lap was pretty decent. Up until then it was just really tricky to find the grip and to try to nail it on one lap. I think you could see everyone was doing either like a build or were going faster on the second attempt. But yeah, I only had time in that last run to go out and just go for that first time. But this time, yeah, it worked out. So yeah, very happy with that. I think overall, it was going quite well. You know, Q1, Q2, Q3. But like I said, just very tough to get the tyres to work in Turn 1, you know, to get that comfortable feeling through that corner. I think that has been a bit the story again the whole week. And I also think it wouldn’t have mattered if we had full running in FP1 and FP2, just on the performance lap, but it seems very tricky with this new tarmac around here since last year. I did a long run in in FP3. So I had a bit of a read on the tyres. And yeah, I don’t think it’s a straightforward race with the tyres. But I think what we’ve shown so far this year, I think the car normally is good in the race.”
Russell: “It is a surprise, there’s no doubt about it. I think we’re learning more and more about this car. We know it’s not where we want it to be. But it’s probably evolved, just with the set-up, since Bahrain to Jeddah, to here. We’ve seen that performance improvement with the exact same car. For sure tyres played a big part this weekend, as Max alluded to, and the pace on that final lap was quite surprising. Really pleased to be just two and a half tenths off, when you know, we were a second off on other occasions. So yeah, let’s see what tomorrow brings. We’ve got to go for it, haven’t we? We’ve got to go for a win. Max is going to be extremely fast, there’s no hiding that. I think it’s difficult to overtake around this circuit, so the start, lap one, is going to be vital – but the Red Bull has extraordinary top speed. So, it’s going to be very difficult to fight with Max. But let’s see. Let’s see how we get on. We’ve got to do our own race. If the opportunity is there, we will go for it.”
Hamilton: “I think it’s perhaps track-specific, but I think ultimately there’s no one in the team that’s had their heads down, in terms of giving up, everyone’s been working incredibly hard to try to squeeze the most out of what we currently have. We are, as George mentioned, a little bit down on downforce, where we really want to be. But everything came together today. So I mean, it feels amazing to be up here, either side of Max. And I really hope that tomorrow, we can somehow hold on to him. He might pull away into the distance like he has done in the past, but we’ll give it our best shot. As for my qualifying, honestly, that felt like a great lap. And it was very, very surreal to see us at the top for a second. And then obviously, I saw Max was finishing his lap, so just about lost it. But then the last lap just wasn’t really that great.
“Unfortunately, as Max mentioned, just difficult to get the tyres working. I left plenty of performance on the table, just in the sense of just couldn’t get the tyres really working. So, the second lap was a bit average. But still, I managed to get it up there for the team. And tomorrow I will do better. Regarding the moment behind Hulkenberg, it definitely was a little bit confusing and definitely wasn’t an optimum way of starting your lap. Normally, you need to try and keep pace up in that last sector. But there was a lot going on. So it wasn’t as good as the start of the previous lap. So I think we did lack a little bit of temperature, and it picked up towards the end of the lap and my last sector, I think, was a little bit better. But yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes.”
Perez: “It’s really hard to digest this one. To end qualifying on the second braking zone is really disappointing. But nothing I can do now. I have to look forwards. I hope we are able to fix the technical issue for tomorrow, otherwise it will be really hard to race like this. We have a bit of an understanding. We are confident that together as a team we will be able to sort it out because it’s very important that we do so. This morning we had the issue. We thought we had fixed it. But this morning I was just going all around. I was riding more on the grass than on the track but we thought we had fixed it. So, I was pretty confident on that part, but that wasn’t the case as soon as I touched the brake in Turn 3.”
Sainz: “I am on one hand very happy, and another hand a bit unhappy. Starting with the negatives, we had a bit of a bad preparation lap in that lap with the tyre temperatures. We let by two or three cars we thought were on a push lap, or they told me they were on a push lap, so I had to slow down a lot to let them by, and then they slowed me down because they were not. I lost two, three tenths in sector one for tyre prep, and then I had to risk a lot sector two and three and picked up the pace, and I did actually a very good lap after that. I think that would have put me in the top three, which would have been good progress and good lap time found from Jeddah.
“Focusing on the positives, I am a lot happier with the car. I’ve done some strong laps, I’ve been pushing quite hard. The changes we’ve made are focused on tomorrow, so that’s why maybe today doesn’t look particularly good. But I’m convinced that today we could have been top three with a clean qualifying lap. I’m hoping that the changes will help tomorrow. If not, still another thing that we have tried and tested, so hopefully we are [moving] in the right direction.”
Leclerc: “Honestly, Q1 and Q2, I didn’t do a great job in terms of driving, so I just had to put everything together, which I think in Q3 was getting a little bit better. Normally I manage to put everything together in Q3, but this time unfortunately, the second run in Q3, we thought the rain was coming, so I went without doing a preparation lap and had to push straight away, which wasn’t good for the tyres. I also found myself behind Carlos for the whole first sector, which is something I hope we will look into as a team because this cost us quite a bit. But it’s like this. “Tomorrow is the race; I think we have quite a good race car. On my side, I maybe compromised a little bit the quali pace for the race pace, so let’s see how it goes.”
Alonso: “I feel good. Obviously, yeah, it was very tight, within one or two-tenths there were a lot of cars and we were on the upper part of that group in Q1 and Q2 – I think I was P2. And then in Q3, by a couple of hundredths we missed the first row of the grid. The Mercedes did a very good job, a very good job in Q3, so still probably the best qualifying of the three [races] for us. We were 0.6 seconds off pole in Bahrain, 0.5 in Jeddah and here 0.4 [seconds] from pole position, so I think we have to be happy and let’s see tomorrow what we can do. I feel confident, I feel positive about tomorrow. Our strength is I think the long run pace so we start in the first two rows of the grid and our strengths are on Sundays – let’s use it. They are always fast – if you read their comments it seems that they have a car that is out of Q3 but it is not that car.”
The Top 10 also featured Williams’ Alexander Albon, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg, the trio making it seven different F1 teams in Q3. The Thai particularly had his confidence boosted further with the kind of pace he could extract from the car.
He hasn’t been too confident since the start of F1 2023, but now reckons that Williams has the car to score points. For Gasly, it was his first appearance in Q3 in Australia as he managed to out-qualify his teammate Esteban Ocon, who encountered traffic.
At Haas, Hulkenberg was once showed the one lap pace power of the F1 team and out-qualify Kevin Magnussen, who didn’t get enough temperature in tyres. The likes of McLaren, AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo completed the lower half of the field.
Lando Norris was struggling in the cooler conditions but still managed to get in Q2, while both the AlphaTauri cars made it in as well with the Alfa Romeo duo a bit confused considering the updates working but not showing on the screens.
Albon: “The adrenaline is still going a bit, but really, really happy. We were good all weekend. In Jeddah we couldn’t get the tyres working and this weekend we could. Tyres are everything. When it is working, it feels so good. We left Jeddah disappointed because we felt there was so much potential in the car. We came into this weekend, a similar track, with similar weather, cold, street track, smooth. We worked hard on it, came up with a game plan coming into this weekend, executed it… It was just one of those very smooth sessions, no mistake on the lap, just ticking away. Today was one of those days. It’s an amazing job for the team, for everyone, that’s really special.
“We were only a few tenths off the Ferraris, which is exciting. Points are on the cards… No one has really done a proper race run, a couple of people did in FP3, so there is a bit of an unknown. Realistically speaking, we would love to be aggressive and have one eye in front of us but there are the quicker cars behind us. We showed it last year; we started 20th last year and we got points, so why not get some more points this year?”
Ocon: “Unfortunately, what was shaping up to be a good day ended in some frustration. We had the pace for a strong Q3 showing but unfortunately met some traffic in the final two corners on my last Q2 push lap and that meant I lost some time. It’s on me for losing a couple of tenths in that case, after what was an otherwise good session for us. There are plenty of positives to take, though, as the performance is there, and we are starting just outside the top ten. It’s all very close between cars at the moment so it should be an exciting race. It’s definitely still all to play for and I’m now focused on maximising tomorrow’s race.”
Hulkenberg: “It was definitely a positive qualifying and Q2 was especially very good. In Q3, I only had one new set of tires when some others maybe had two, but either way it wasn’t quite there. I wasn’t able to produce a lap like in Q2 but nevertheless, another top 10 finish which is positive and we’ll take that into tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty confident and feeling good about the race.”
Norris: “Today wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping. The cooler conditions just made us struggle a little bit more to be consistent and get the maximum out of the car. I’m not quite driving the way I want and to the level I want so I struggled to put everything together. But it’s still not a bad position to start and we can hopefully try to get into the points.
Tsunoda: “Qualifying was good, we built the pace well throughout and maximised the performance. Q1 was ok and we ended up in P15, but we were able to take another step each lap. For Q2, we had planned to do two push laps, but unfortunately, the weighbridge stopped me from completing my second lap. Considering I only had one flying lap, I’m pleased with it and the increase in performance by my team. I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow, we haven’t done any long-run testing, but we will aim to extract the maximum out of the car to be able to score points.”
Bottas: “The upgrades we brought to Melbourne seem to be working as we expected, so there’s no denying we expected more from qualifying. This is, of course, not where we wanted to be, and there are definitely a lot of questions about this qualifying session. We seemed to lack pace, and on top of that, I also encountered a bit of traffic on the final lap, when I felt the best grip from the tyres, so there wasn’t much more we could do. At least, starting from the back opens some more opportunities with the strategy, so let’s see what we can achieve during the race. These are far from being ideal starting positions, but we’ll investigate what went wrong and regroup to go for it again tomorrow.”
Here’s how F1 Australian GP qualifying panned out
