Mercedes starts leading

The Mercedes team has led the first test of the Grand Prix of Australia with Rosberg at the top and a few thousandths away from the defending champion Lewis Hamilton. Quiet session where Carlos Sainz was surprisingly fourth and Merhi did not come out with the Manor.

The first free practice of this new year of Formula 1 took place today in Albert Park, the green light showed up and the first out on track was the Toro Rosso of Verstappen followed by Vettel and his Ferrari called Eva.

The bad news reached us at the beginning of the session was that both Roberto Merhi as Stevens could not run during the session because Manorwas still to understand car electronics. The other question was to see which drivers would drive the Sauber as Van der Garde should have a place on the team.

Meanwhile on track all drivers made an “outing” to check the sensors of the car and to see that everything was in place. And after a brief pit stop both Mercedes went out to set time, Rosberg was first and Hamilton second to 2 seconds of the German.

In the first half hour the timesheets started to get filled though no one could get Rosberg down in the first position. The Mercedes driver was ahead of the two Ferraris and a Carlos Sainz who was up to fourth place. Hamilton fell to seventh place.

Drivers focused on understanding the operation of their new machines and new Pirelli compounds and were rolling but not improving times. During this period we would not see anything important until Hamilton managed to climb to second place just 29 thousandths far from time marked by his teammate. And after English, Sainz was in third place.

With 30 minutes to go, the local driver, Ricciardo, stepped a little grass on the penultimate corner of the track and made a spin, nothing serious and getting the car back on track in seconds.

After this, the drivers came into the pits gradually leading to a break where missing 20 minutes from the end there was no car on the track until Verstappen again broke the silence of Albert Park. McLaren would no longer go out, trying to rectify a problem in their MGU-K.

At the end of the session Bottas was placed third and Vettel got between the two Toro Rosso after a little off track at turn 13.

Quiet session without incidents where drivers have done many laps, for example Sainz and Verstappen and where there has been great absenses, Gosjean has only done 2 laps, the Sauber who have not finally rolled and Manor waiting to go out in the second session.

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