BRENDAN LINES APRIL 8, 2022

PREVIOUS lap records were obliterated by over four seconds seconds when Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was fastest in FP1 at Albert Park on Friday.

The throaty roar of the latest breed of turbo-hybrid Formula 1 cars turned a wheel in anger on the new-and-improved track layout after a three-year hiatus.

The previous record of Michael Shumacher (1:24.125) set in 2004, was surpassed when Verstappen laid down an early marker with a 1:20.857s in his soft-tyre shod Red Bull, trading fastest-lap blows with world title-rival,  Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The session was then red-flagged when debris littered the circuit from  Sergio Perez’s Red Bull 13 minutes in.

The jettison bits of the RB16 was unable to hamper Perez’s run, he would later finish the session in P3 +0.593 off Sainz’s time.

After the re-start, the sister Ferrari of Carlos Sainz then jumped the world-title combatants with 20 minutes to go in the session putting three-hundreds back to the Red Bull, Sainz then eventually set the best time of the session half-a second clear of his teammate.

It was promising for McLaren with Lando Norris opening the session with a long run and occupying P4 for most of the session, then eventually finishing. P5

While hometown hero Daniel Ricciardo was thereabouts with Norris putting in some solid runs, his fastest run on the soft tyres was enough for P8.

Sebastian Vettel’s engine failure on his first weekend back for the season with Aston Martin came to a standstill along Lakeside drive straight, bringing  out the second red-flag of the session.

FP2 of the Australian Grand Prix begins at 4.00pm local time on Friday.

FULL RESULTS

1	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	1:19.806	SPLIT
2	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	1:20.377	+0.571s	21 LAPS
3	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	1:20.399	+0.593s	20
4	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	1:20.626	+0.820s	22
5	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	1:20.878	+1.072s	22
6	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	1:21.004	+1.198s	27
7	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	1:21.027	+1.221s	26
8	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	1:21.155	+1.349s	23
9	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	1:21.229	+1.423s	21
10	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	1:21.247	+1.441s	23
11	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	1:21.289	+1.483s	26
12	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	1:21.457	+1.651s	26
13	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	1:21.661	+1.855s	18
14	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	1:21.701	+1.895s	26
15	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	1:21.821	+2.015s	21
16	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	1:21.869	+2.063s	24
17	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:22.754	+2.948s	25
18	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	1:23.186	+3.380s	18
19	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:23.924	+4.118s	25
20	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	1:24.349	+4.543s	15