Lewis Hamilton burns off rivals Triple world champ in ‘league of his own’
LEWIS Hamilton was hailed as being “in a league of his own” yesterday as he burnt off his rivals in the year’s opening practice sessions at the Australian Grand Prix.
The triple world champion bossed the field and held a half-second gap over Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and his new Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, in the afternoon session.
Britain’s Hamilton followed up his field-leading fastest lap of 1 minute 24.22 seconds in the morning run with a blistering 1:23.620 in the late afternoon.
It was around onetenth of a second off Vettel’s circuit record of 1:23.529, posted for Red Bull in qualifying ahead of his 2011 race victory.
“Hamilton is in a league of his own at the moment,” Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said.
“His one-lap pace was really good and he took the ultrasofts for 17 laps and was stable.”
Ferrari were expected to press Hamilton and the Mercedes team after superior times in pre-season testing but on the evidence of the opening two sessions, Hamilton is again the driver to beat in tomorrow’s season-opener.
“I’m super-happy to be back in the car, particularly after a first day like that. It was 99% perfect,” Hamilton said.
“I’ll be pushing as hard as I can to win this race.”
Finland’s Bottas slotted smoothly into the Mercedes team environment with a best lap of 1:24.176.
“I definitely feel like I can make a step forward tomorrow. It’ll be a busy evening for us looking through all the data to see where we can improve, but it’s a reasonable start,” Bottas said.
Ferrari improved markedly on their opening practice, with Vettel unleashing the secondbest lap time in FP2 with 1:24.167 while teammate Kimi Raikkonen was fourth with 1:24.525.
The Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were more than a second behind Hamilton and half-a-second off Vettel’s Ferrari.
“We can still get more out of it. This morning was promising but we tried a few things this afternoon and they didn’t work as much as we’d like,” said Ricciardo, bidding to become the race’s first Aussie winner in 37 years. — AFP