Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix

Driver Quotes - Friday 14 March

Oscar Piastri "It was a productive first day back for us, and it was pretty encouraging. We've still got some things to work on, but the pace was there. We've tried a few different things and gathered some good information, the car feels different to last year but that's pretty normal. I am excited to see what we can do tomorrow - it's been a pretty positive first day."

Lando Norris "A decent first day back in the car. Good feelings, all in all. We're struggling a bit with the balance, so we need to make a few changes to get it into a better place, but a good start to the weekend for us as a team. A good baseline, but a bit to improve on."

Max Verstappen: "Today the grip wasn't great and we were struggling on all four tyres, particularly in sector one and in the final sector. It feels like we are not up there at the moment but we will work to find more pace. There are no major balance issues, so I think this makes things a bit harder to fix. But this isn't anything that we didn't expect when we arrived here. Positively, I think we were surprised with the pace that the car showed. Historically, we have not been that good here in Melbourne since the new tarmac update so will see how we go over the weekend. However, we will continue to work to find a bit more pace ahead of qualifying."

Liam Lawson: "I felt comfortable in the car today, but it just wasn't fast enough, so we have a lot of work to do overnight. Day one on a new track you are expecting to have work to do but not this much. We can't really pinpoint why it's been tricky out there so far, if we knew we could fix it a lot quicker. We need to pick it up on short run pace, but the long run pace wasn't great either, so yeah, a lot to do. So, it will be a challenge for the Team, but we will aim to improve for tomorrow."

Charles Leclerc: The feeling in the car was good and we had a solid first day on track. There is still some margin for improvement in terms of the balance, which is the same for everyone across the paddock, given that these cars are still pretty new to all of us and we have to push to understand their limits.

It's too early to come to any conclusions. We will only get a first idea of the respective pace of all the teams in qualifying. All in all, it was a good day and we look forward to tomorrow, when we want to target pole position.

Lewis Hamilton: It's great to finally get going and start my first race weekend with Scuderia Ferrari HP. It's been a learning day as I continue to understand and get to grips with the new car. Everything is so completely different from what I've been used to for so long but that's the challenge, and I'm embracing it.

We were not completely satisfied with FP1 but we made some good progress in FP2 and got some solid longer runs in, which was important. There's still balance work to do overnight, and we're missing a bit of pace, but that's expected. It's about building step by step, maximising what we have, and continuing to push forward. Looking forward to working hard and seeing what improvements we can make tomorrow.

George Russell: It was an interesting first day of the season. We looked particularly quick on the Hard and Medium compounds, and the overall balance of the car felt strong. On the Soft tyre, we didn't improve as much as you might expect. That is something we will evaluate overnight but, with the track temperature over 40°C today, that may have played a part. It is encouraging that there is inherent pace in the car though, as we've seen on the C3 and C4 compounds. Our focus is now unlocking that pace across all three tyre compounds and hopefully we can do that tomorrow.

It felt good to be back out on track here; the fans are always incredible in Melbourne and it's a fun circuit to drive. I had a couple of moments out there but was able to keep it out the wall. I am confident that we can find the improvements we are looking for overnight and have a smoother day on Saturday.

Kimi Antonelli: It was a positive first day of the season. Overall, I was pleased with how everything went. I'm getting more and more confident with each lap and continue to build my learning. The long run in FP2 was good and gives us a strong platform for the rest of the weekend. We've got some work to do on the single lap to find a bit more performance; that is mainly linked to getting the tyres in the right window and something we will focus on improving overnight. We've got plenty of data to work with to do that ahead of Saturday.

It is slightly too early to make any predictions on our relative performance. We don't know what the other teams are doing, and we were offset on tyre strategy today. The car was feeling good though and we will see what we can do in Qualifying tomorrow.

Pierre Gasly: "The first Friday Practice day of the year is done and it's good to be back in the car in Melbourne. It seemed today there was a lot of action on track, which made things challenging to put together a clean lap with all the traffic. We managed to try a lot of things on the car across both Free Practice 1 and Free Practice 2. The conditions here are very different to what we faced at Pre-Season Testing in Bahrain. That leaves us a lot to analyse and it is important now for us to make the right choices on set-up for the rest of the weekend. There remains the potential threat of rain at some point, which will make things interesting. We'll aim to put the pieces together ahead of the first Qualifying of the season."

Jack Doohan: "My first few laps in front of my home crowd were amazing, lots of good emotions which I will be channelling through the whole weekend. Today was a good day of learning across the two sessions, we are trying lots of different things to build out our balance and make sure we are in a good place for tomorrow. The car ran well in both sessions, and we were able to maximise our running with the conditions that we faced. We will debrief as a team and discuss what we can do in Free Practice 3 to put ourselves in a good position ahead of Qualifying."

Esteban Ocon: "It hasn't been the smoothest day for us. It's the first day of the year, it's normal that it goes that way, but we still have more to put together to get correct and exploit the maximum out of the car. I wasn't happy with the balance and how the car felt - we made a step between FP1 and FP2 - but we need more, so hopefully we can do that in FP3 and build on from there."

Oliver Bearman : "I'm sad to have missed all that running today. The team did a great job to try and get the car back out, but we just ran out of time. I made a small mistake in turn 10 which put me a bit wide, and out there it's very bumpy and unfortunately I lost it. I struggled a little bit, but I felt confident - maybe too much - but I felt at home and was building up nicely. FP3 is a long session and then into qualifying, the race will be a bit of a roll of the dice currently."

Alex Albon: We had an issue with the brakes in FP1 but were able to fix that after the session and settled into it more. By the end of FP2 I was in a fairly good place, but we lost performance to our rivals on the Soft tyre, so we need to understand why as it doesn't feel right and it's important to get on top of that ahead of Qualifying. On the Medium tyre, I feel we would comfortably be in Q3, but the Softs have changed a bit from last year and we are just trying to understand them. All being said, not a bad start today.

Carlos Sainz: Definitely a positive Friday for us, with FP1 quite strong. FP2, we didn't manage to find performance on the Soft tyre, so we need to look into this ahead of Qualifying tomorrow. If we manage to unlock some performance on the Softs, then I think we can be competitive. The field is extremely tight, with various teams doing some very fast laps, so I think tomorrow it will be all about executing a clean Qualifying and seeing where that takes us.

Nico Hulkenberg: "It has been a positive first Friday for us as a team. We changed the setup quite a bit between FP1 and FP2 and the resulting feedback turned out to be positive. It didn't feel that easy, though the lap times on low fuel look ok. In the end tomorrow's qualifying will tell us where we are compared to the competition. We managed to gather a lot of information which we process overnight and obviously we'll try to improve by tomorrow. Right now, it's about taking it step by step and optimizing the car session by session.

Gabriel Borteleto: "Overall, I'm quite happy with today. We tested a few different things, especially in FP2, focusing on gathering as much data as possible to understand what works best and identify where we can improve. It's been a valuable day for learning about the car and the track conditions. FP3 tomorrow will give us another chance to fine-tune the setup and make any adjustments we need ahead of qualifying. The feeling has been decent so far, and I'm looking forward to getting back out there tomorrow."