On the Albert Park track in Melbourne, the teams will have experienced a truncated first day in this Australian Grand Prix. During the second free practice session, the rain came after fifteen minutes. If the teams were able to do some testing on intermediate tires for the first time this season (since there had been no rain in Bahrain and then in Saudi Arabia), they would only have had this short quarter of an hour driving on a dry track (and which should become dry again for Saturday and Sunday).
In this window, also marked by a lot of traffic problems on the last part of the circuit, it was Fernando Alonso who set the best time in 1’18”887 with his Aston Martin. He was ahead of Charles Lerclerc and his Ferrari (+0”445) and Max Verstappen with his Red Bull (+0”615). For Alpine, Esteban Ocon took sixth place (+0”838) on medium tires and Pierre Gasly tenth on hard (+1”319).
Earlier in the day in Melbourne, during the first fully dry free practice, Verstappen (1’18”790) was the fastest ahead of Lewis Hamilton (+0”433) and Sergio Perez (+0′ ‘503). The session had also been disrupted. The red flag was raised twice. The first time, for an unusual reason: a breakdown of the GPS system which allows the teams to know the position of all the drivers (and therefore to warn theirs in a slow lap of the imminent arrival of an opponent). Then Logan Sargeant had an electrical problem on his Williams. The session was shortened by a few minutes for all the drivers. And the American then missed all of EL2, the problem not being solved by Williams.
