Friday’s first practice session in Melbourne was led by Lewis Hamilton.
Valtteri Bottas started his career as a racing driver for Cadillac. PDO
The F1 series entered a new era on Friday, when the first GP event of the 2026 season took place at the Albert Park park circuit in Melbourne.
Already the first practice session showed what kind of difficulties the teams are facing with new engines and smaller formula cars.
Racing Bulls debutant Arvid Lindblad didn’t even get to the track when the mechanics already came to push the car back to the pit.
McLaren drivers Lando Norris complained about the operation of the transmission, and Oscar Piastri couldn’t get gas to the internal combustion engine.
Fernando Alonso didn’t get to travel during the entire training session. Team mate Lance Stroll took a turn on the track, but was half a minute behind the top pace.
by Alex Albon Williams stopped at the side of the track as the hydraulic pressure disappeared from the car.
It wasn’t easy for others either. The biggest champion favorite of the season George Russell he was also more than 1.1 seconds behind Charles Leclerc from the quotation.
Cadillac’s first practice session in the F1 series went quite well, except for one problem. Valtteri Bottas was 3.8 seconds behind Leclerc’s top time, but the most worrying thing was that both Bottas and his teammate Sergio Perez lost another mirror from the car due to vibration.
Pérez spun at the end of practice, and at least according to the television picture, it was more of a technical problem than a driving error.
On Friday, there will be another training session, which starts at 7:00 a.m. in Finland.
