Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in both Friday free practice sessions in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver was the only one, who went below the 1:24 min mark with a stunning time of 1:23.620 min in FP2 with ultrasofts. Hamilton finished half a second clear of team-mate Valtteri Bottas in FP1. The Mercedes drivers used ultrasofts, with their rivals from Red Bull and Ferrari were on supersofts.
In FP2 he was 0.5 sek ahead of Sebastian Vettel in a Ferrari. The time was just a tenth shy of the qualifying lap record at the circuit, a 1:23.529 posted by Sebastian Vettel back in 2011. Valteri Bottas finished 3rd and Kimi Raikkönen took fourth. All four drivers had abandoned flying laps at the start of their Ultra Soft runs, when Felipe Massa pulled off the track after losing drive and brought out the yellow flags.
“Coming into today we had no idea where we would stand, Hamilton said. It was kind of a night and day difference to how the car felt on the last day of testing. The car’s feeling good. So I got through all my running. And I got a good understanding of the tyres on low and high fuel which puts us in good stead for tomorrow.”
Daniel Ricciardo in a Red Bull finished fifth, one second off the pace, while Max Verstappen was 6th. The Dutch driver run wide at Turn 12, ran over the kerbs and onto the grass, in the process damaging his car. This meant he ended his session early, without a time on ultrasoft or a race simulation in Melbourne.
“I think we are a bit too slow so we’ll try to improve, said Verstappen. – I think Mercedes is again pretty quick. So it will be difficult to beat them. You can clearly see Mercedes is very quick and Ferrari should be the second team at the moment. I think we still need to do quite a lot of work to beat them. I think we are where I expected us to be, so we’ll try to make the best of it.”
Carlos Sainz Jr. put his Toro Rosso in 7th, ahead of Romain Grosjean, Niko Hulkenberg and Dani Kvyat. Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon took 11th and 13th for Force India. Fernando Alonso (Mclaren) slot between them
Massa was 7th in FP1, but in the second session finished only 14th because of his problems with, ahead of Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson, as he slid into the gravel at Turn 6 late on, and rookie team-mate Lance Stroll. Stoffel Vandoorne placed 17th, six-tenths down on team-mate Fernando Alonso, but ahead of Pascal Wehrlein.
FP2 FINAL CLASSIFICATION: HAM is looking ? #AusGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/IMTF22wIXr
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 24, 2017
