Carlos Sainz started the weekend of the Australian GP in the best possible way: with the best time of the session. With half a second of margin over his partner, the World Cup leader charles leclercthe man from Madrid showed his good adaptation to the renewed Melbourne track, although he also finished the session with a call from the stewards.
At the beginning of the training hour, Sainz hindered Guanyu Zhou when this came in a good lap and the judges decided to investigate it. Anything other than a simple reprimand would be a major surprise.
With the Red Bulls lagging behind the Ferraris (Sergio Perez ahead of a max Verstappen that he did not press), the news was left by the McLarens. After the lousy start to the season, they were 5th lando norris and 8th Daniel Ricciardowhich gives a good example of his improvement at least from the beginning in the local weekend for the ‘3’.
Right after Ricciardo finished Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard, in one of the few tests with soft tires that he did in this session, settled for 9th time, three tenths behind his teammate Stephen Ocon, who surpassed him again and was 6th. Los Alpine, ‘piano piano’, and scared after a spin by the Spaniard in the middle of the morning.
The return of Sebastian Vettel after missing the first two races of the season he ended with a scare. The German had to abruptly stop the Aston Martin due to a fire that, as is traditional for him, he extinguished with the fire extinguisher in hand.
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Beyond this red flag (and another that caused a piece of Pérez’s Red Bull at the beginning of the session), it was a good opportunity for all the runners to re-launch the ‘aussie’ circuit, although it will be in the second round of free when they demonstrate their real potential.
Free time table 1 Australian Grand Prix
Photos: ferrari