31/03/2023
NEWS STORY
Round 3 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with Friday practice at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Albert Park as teams prepared for Sunday's 58-lap Australian Grand Prix.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen endured a scrappy FP1 - the hour-long session interrupted by two red flag stop periods - one of which for a loss of GPS across the field meaning teams couldn't monitor car position and closing speeds. Hulkenberg had started the day off running the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tire before switching to a Red soft set - on which he clocked a 1:19.806 lap for P13 on the timesheet. Magnussen opted for the White hard tire to start before he too swapped onto the soft compound - the Dane unable to get a clean lap in due to the GPS issue, with a best recorded time of 1:21.147 (P20).
FP2 in the afternoon saw further disruption to run plans thanks to rain 20 minutes into the second session. Magnussen's early running, while the track was dry, was hampered with a telemetry issue. Rain had just started to fall when Magnussen set his best lap of 1:21.266 (P19). Hulkenberg had earlier logged a 1:20.194 lap on the hard rubber - netting the German P9 before the showers hit. Both cars later sampled the Pirelli Cinturato Green intermediate tires to get a feel for the 5.279-kilometer (3.280-mile), 14-turn circuit in the damp conditions.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 73 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 38 by Hulkenberg and 35 by Magnussen.
Kevin Magnussen: "Sometimes in practice you don't get your lap when you need it and on new tires - the soft tires - I just got traffic with that GPS failure. In FP2, it started raining when we went out so I'm not too worried about the positions, I'm happy about the feeling in the car. Given all the stuff that happened today, I don't really think we can see who is where. I'm just going with the feeling and that's positive, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow and seeing what we can do."
Nico Hulkenberg: "It's what they say about Melbourne, four seasons in one day. Today was one of those days and it was a bit short with limited running in FP2 because of the rain. I have a positive feeling, the car felt good and the balance wasn't too far off so now it's the usual optimizing the set-up for tomorrow. It's hard to tell about tomorrow from today, but I'll stay open-minded and give it everything as always."
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "FP1 was good for us today. There was a little bit of confusion when the GPS didn't work therefore you can see Kevin at the end of the classifications because he couldn't put a proper lap in - Norris was out there, and Norris didn't know we were around, and we didn't know Norris was around. Otherwise, good progress was made in FP1. For FP2 there was a little bit more confusion, this time with the rain coming. We had a telemetry issue on Kevin's car where he lost some time so he couldn't put a lap in when it was dry. We learned a lot today, so we just need to do a good job in FP3 and we'll be ready for qualifying."
Check out our Friday gallery from Melbourne here.