Piastri fastest on first day of season as Britain’s Lindblad impresses

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finished the first day of the new Formula 1 season in first place after Friday practice at the Australian Grand Prix.

The narrative of the weekend so far has been about Aston Martin’s plight at the back of the field as much as the fight at the front, following the biggest regulation change in the sport’s history.

Aston Martin finished the day five seconds off the pace, and team principal Adrian Newey has laid bare the team’s struggles across two compelling news conferences.

Newey also revealed that star driver Fernando Alonso is in a “hard mental place” as a result of engine partner Honda’s lack of performance and reliability, and that he himself “feels a bit powerless”.

At the front of the field, Piastri was 0.214 seconds quicker than Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli at the end of the second session.

The Italian’s team-mate George Russell was third fastest, ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

The competitive picture is still unclear after a day on which many of the teams and drivers admitted they were struggling to work out the optimum use of energy with this year’s new engines. Management of the hybrid system is critical with the power split about 50-50 between internal combustion engine and electrical power.

Mercedes, though, set highly impressive times on their race-distance runs late in the session that seemed to underline their position as pre-season favourites.

Russell looked as if he had an advantage over the rest of the field of as much as 0.6secs a lap on his long run, leaving Leclerc sounding a little resigned.

Ferrari were fancied by many coming into the season and spent much of the day at the top of the times, only to be usurped by McLaren and Mercedes.

Leclerc said: “P1 looked positive but then in P2 the teams are showing little by little a bit more and unfortunately we seem to be on the back foot especially compared to Mercedes, who look very strong.

“I don’t think they showed everything on low fuel but on high fuel it was very impressive. It is the first time probably we see how much (of a gap) there is to them and it is a bit more than I would have liked.”

Australian Piastri said: “If you can operate the car roughly how you expect it to, then you find a huge amount of lap time.

“I think we have been there or thereabouts. don’t think we ever thought we were a long way behind Mercedes and Ferrari. I think we thought we were just a little step behind.”

Antonelli added: “Massive learning every time we go on track and we understand more about the track. It looks like it is a close fight with the top teams. It is not going to be easy. Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, they all look strong.”

The focus has been on Aston Martin as a result of major problems with their Honda engine.

Alonso missed the entire first session because of vibration problems with his engine but was able to do 17 laps in the second, although he was 4.933 seconds off the pace in 20th place.

Aston Martin’s biggest issue is the fact that vibrations from the engine are causing the batteries to break. Newey revealed the team are down to their last two batteries. “That, given our kind of rate of battery damage, is quite a scary place to be in,” he said.

Alonso said: “Not much learning to be honest, unfortunately the Honda issue in P1 and some Honda issues in P2 as well a little bit limited our number of laps today. That was not needed again because we need to recover a little bit in terms of understanding the car and the window where this car operates.

“We brought a completely new (aerodynamic) package into this race and we need to understand where to run it. Hopefully more laps tomorrow.

“Obviously I feel disappointed to not have more batteries in stock, only supplying one team but it is more a question for them.”

Completing the top 10 was the second Red Bull of Isack Hadjar and Haas’ Esteban Ocon, whose British team-mate Oliver Bearman was 11th.

1. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) – 1:19.729

2. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.214

3. George Russell (Mercedes) +0.320

4. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.321

5. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.562

6. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.637

7. Lando Norris (McLaren) +1.065

8. Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +1.193

9. Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +1.212

10. Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.450