Hamilton tops in free practice,Vettel 5th
Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets for Mercedes in both practice sessions at the Australian Grand Prix on Friday but Red Bull’s Max Verstappen showed enough pace to give the Silver Arrows pause for thought.
After lapping Albert Park in one minute 1:24.026 seconds to dominate the first practice of the new season, Hamilton improved the mark slightly to 1:23.931 in the second session.
Red Bull’s Dutch wunderkind Verstappen was snapping at his heels, however, finishing only 0.127 seconds behind Hamilton.
Raising hopes of a contest for Mercedes there was less than three-tenths of a second separating the champions from the Red Bull and Ferrari cars.
Verstappen sandwiched himself between the Mercedes drivers, with Hamilton’s team mate Valtteri Bottas third quickest.
Fourth in FP2, Kimi Raikkonen showed Ferrari may also be in the hunt for the race but he will have to face the stewards after allegedly impeding Bottas, who nearly rammed into his rear and ended up in the gravel.
It was a tougher day for Sebastian Vettel, who was more than a half-second off the pace in FP2 in fifth.But he downplayed the subdued dry run. “We still have quite a lot of performance in hand. I am not too worried because I know if I get everything right we should be in better shape,”he said.
Red Bull’s home hope Daniel Ricciardo was seventh but his low-fuel flying lap was affected by a red flag during the session due to cabling becoming unearthed at the start-finish line.
Tipped to be the big improvers, Haas delivered in spades, with Romain Grosjean sixth in FP2 and Kevin Magnussen ninth.
There was some encouragement for McLaren, whose day began bleakly as engineers fussed over an exhaust system problem that left twice champion Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne confined to the garage for most of the session. But Alonso emerged to post the eighth fastest lap and held the position.
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