First day of 2022 Australian F1 GP practice recap

After three years of absence, today the first day of practice for the upcoming 2022 Australian F1 GP was finally there. A huge crowd attended both free practice sessions at the revised and now very fast and flowing Albert Park track.

As expected, the re-worked Albert Park track was very ‘green’ and slippery at the start of the weekend. The cars were sliding a lot on the untreated brand new asphalt had a very high degree of track evolution as more rubber was laid onto the surface during the sessions.

Ferrari led the way in both sessions, with Charles Leclerc setting the best time of the day in FP2 using the P Zero Red soft to 1:18.978 min.

The track conditions led to some graining as the cars struggled for grip in comparatively cool weather: the afternoon FP2 session got underway in ambient temperatures of 21ºC and track temperatures of 30ºC. Although it was cloudy, there were a few spots of rain, but the tarmac stayed dry. It's likely to stay dry for the rest of the weekend.

Two key elements that all the F1 teams focused on today was learning the new layout of the circuit and assessing the performance of the different nominated compounds and with a bigger step than usual between the medium and soft compounds this weekend.

So far, the performance gap between the Pirelli White hard tyre and the Pirelli Yellow medium is in the region of 0.8 seconds, with a similar difference between the medium and the soft. With track evolution remaining high, that could still come down in the next two days.

Pirelli's Motorsport Director Mario Isola said about FP1 & FP2:
"Today was an interesting day as we saw the new track layout in action for the first time and also the teams trying out the bigger step in the compounds between medium and soft. This has turned out to be the right nomination this weekend so far, given the performance gaps we measured between the tyres today, so that’s something we might do again at other races in future.

We observed some graining on the medium and soft in particular during both sessions. As this obviously has a direct effect on degradation, managing it will be a key element to the race strategy; although we’d probably expect the teams to focus on the two harder compounds, using the soft for qualifying. With the track evolution here, we’ve not quite seen the full picture yet so the final data we get from FP3 tomorrow will also be important in terms of strategy."

This is what several drivers said about the first day of practice

Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo car 77)
“I am pretty happy about where we are and I think I have a realistic chance to keep my Q3 streak going – I don’t want to give up on that! That’s our goal, if we set the car up right tonight we should be fighting for a place in the top ten. We were able to run with different compounds today and the way they work reflect pretty much what we expected, so we are confident we can use them well, and I didn’t suffer from too much degradation, which is a positive. Overall, I am pleased – I also really like the new track layout. It’s fast, overtaking should be easier but not too easy: I think they did a good job.”

Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo car 24)
“The first impact with this track was quite interesting, probably not quite what I imagined it would be. I did a lot of running in the simulator, but it’s only when you’re actually here that you notice how close you are to the grass and how tiny and narrow the track is. It’s a tricky layout but I am enjoying it: it’s nice to drive and I’m getting into a rhythm. I am still learning about the car, about the engineering, and how to get the most out of everything throughout the weekend: to also have to learn a new track is an added challenge, but I like it – it’s not a big issue. Our pace looks competitive, I am optimistic for tomorrow. We still have a lot of work to do with the engineers, so hopefully we can find something more overnight. If we put our lap together, we should be in a good place.”

Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri car 10)
“I must say this new track layout is pretty cool, it’s definitely a lot faster which is always personally something I like, as you can definitely feel the potential of an F1 car when you’re going through a corner at 200-250 kph, that is a really unique experience. It’s obviously quite challenging getting to grips with a new layout and definitely bumpier than we expected, but it’s been a good day. There’s a couple of things to improve for tomorrow, to unlock some more potential, but generally speaking I’ve enjoyed today. I think we struggled a bit this morning and didn’t start the session off in the best way, but we made a lot of improvements for FP2 which was really positive. Alpine are looking strong this weekend, especially with Fernando, but we’ll focus on ourselves ahead of Qualifying and try to extract the most from the car. Personally, I don’t know if there will be more grip coming tomorrow but I hope so, from past experience that’s what we’ve seen on new tarmac, but let’s wait and see.”

Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri car 22)
“I really enjoyed driving around this track. I don’t know the difference from previous years, as it’s my first time, but I felt confident around here straight away. We had good pace early on and I’m pretty happy with how the day went. We know our limitations and we’re heading in the right direction in finding the right setup for the car. There are still a few areas where I can improve myself as well, so we will see how we can put everything together to maximise the performance of the car ahead of tomorrow.”

Lance Stroll (Aston Martin car 18)
“I think we have a made a good start to our weekend and the car is in a decent starting place, although we always want to find and extract more pace from it. We will work hard tonight to see if we can find more gains. It has been really fun to take on the challenge of a revised Albert Park Circuit. It is much faster and more exciting, and the four DRS zones should help cars get closer and improve overtaking, so let us see what the rest of the weekend has in store for us.”

Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin car 5)
“It was a shame to have to finish FP1 earlier than we would have liked – and then not be able to take part in FP2 – because today was an important day for me in terms of getting back up to speed with the car and learning a new layout. The positives are that I felt I was able to get comfortable quite quickly and that we had a good balance in the car, too. It is a shame, however, not to have completed more laps, but it was a power unit issue and that meant we had to replace it. The car will be fine for tomorrow and we will continue to work hard and make progress.”

Max Verstappen (Red Bull car 1)
“Today has been quite positive, the grip on track was good and the bumps have definitely improved, it’s a bit smoother and it makes the track nicer as well because you can actually attack the corners a bit more, I enjoyed my laps today. I think in FP1 and at the beginning of FP2 we were lacking a bit of balance, then for the final run we changed the car around a little bit and I felt a lot happier. We are still a tiny bit off Ferrari, but I think this weekend we can maybe make it a little bit closer. In the long run I think everything worked well, so I am happy about that, and we’ve made some good improvements today. We are heading in a good direction and we’ll try to build from there tomorrow.”

Sergio Perez (Red Bull car 11)
“It was a fairly challenging Friday for us. We made some changes going into FP2 that we must analyse because a few things aren’t working as expected. The car felt better in some ways from FP1 into the second session and in other ways not, there is plenty to work on to try to understand the direction we have taken. It has been a very difficult day in terms of mileage, starting in FP1 and we lost some track time in FP2 but I think we have some good data to go over tonight. If we can find a few tenths then that would turn things in our favour this weekend, we just have to understand where we are at the moment with the car.”

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