The session ended ahead of schedule after two red flags were seen
Hamilton set the second best time and ‘Checo’ Pérez, the third, while Alonso finished with the sixth fastest time
the dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull) was the fastest this Friday in the first free practice of the Australian Grand Prix, at Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit, in a session with two red flags that ended early. In his best lap, Verstappen, current world champion and who has never won in Australia, set a time of one minute, 18 seconds and 790 thousandthswith a soft tire, the only one that went down from 1:19.
the dutch 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.
The session was interrupted by a red flag for around 10 minutes, after the second half of training, for security reasons due to problems with the GPS tracking system. 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.
With less than 5 minutes to go before the end of practice, American Logan Sargeant’s Williams stopped working due to mechanical problems and stopped on the grass near turn 11, for which the race directors they raised the red flag again and determined the end of the session.
The Albert Park layout, with a length of 5.303 kilometres, is classified as a fast circuit since the remodeling it underwent last year, in which some slow curves were eliminated. The Australian GP, which traditionally opened the World Cup, was placed since 2022 as the third test of the 23 that this season’s calendar has.