It was this early Friday morning, at the Melbourne circuit. The Dutchman, two-time world champion, finished ahead of Hamilton and ‘Checo’ Pérez.
It seems impossible, but it was real. A ‘traffic jam’ on the track forced the first practice session of the Formula 1 for him Australian Grand Prixwho later ended up winning the Dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull) escorted by Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and his teammate Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez.
The argument used by the organization of the maximum competition was a problem in the GPS of the vehicleswhich did not allow him to inform the teams of the location of the rivals on the track, which produced a rare image for this type of session, where time is usually alternated on the asphalt.
These problems caused heavy traffic in some sectors of the circuit, but the expertise of the drivers -such as the Chinese Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo)- prevented an accident from happening.
But it was not the only interruption that the session had, since it ended prematurely after a second red flag, which appeared with less than 5 minutes to go when the American’s Williams Logan Sargeant it stopped working with mechanical problems and came to a halt on the grass near turn 11.
All this did not prevent Verstappen from being the fastest in the first training session. In the best of his laps, the current two-time world champion and who never won in Australia, set a time of one minute, 18 seconds and 790 thousandths, on soft tyres, the only one that went below 1:19.
The Dutchman was 433 thousandths faster than the British Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), second, and the Mexican Sergio Pérez (Red Bull), who signed the third best time at 503 thousandths -with intermediate wheels in the best of his laps- from Verstappen .
For his part, the Spanish Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) concluded the session in fourth place and stopped the clock at 527 thousandths of the best time, with hard tires, while his compatriot Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) finished sixth at 715 thousandths of the Red Bull.
