What did the initial training in Australia show? Mercedes in trouble again, where are Ferrari and Red Bull?

In Melbourne, Australia, we have had two opening practice sessions, which gave us a hint of what the rest of the race weekend could look like. The Mercedes team is still struggling, while McLaren has seen some improvement. However, the Ferrari drivers dominated practice.

We don’t have a miracle fix for Melbourne, our performance is not meeting our expectations. This was uttered by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff ahead of the race weekend in Australia. Not only the opening two races of the 2022 season, but also the start of the weekend at the Melbourne circuit prove his assertion.

In FP1 (Free Practice 1 – ed.) the Mercedes drivers finished seventh and twelfth, and after the second practice George Russell was even number 11 in the results list, Lewis Hamilton 13th.

It should be noted that red flags were waved in both practice sessions, for safety reasons due to debris on the track.

As the practice sessions and detailed telemetry show, the Ferrari and Red Bull drivers will very likely be fighting for the win again on Sunday. In FP1, Carlos Sainz was the quicker of the pair from the Italian team, but the opposite was true in practice 2.

However, as it seems, Red Bull has not yet shown its full speed in the opening race weekend and one can expect its drivers to get even faster in qualifying and the race. Third and fourth in FP1, second and fifth in FP2 – these are Red Bull’s practice results so far.

The Alpine team, however, put in a very solid performance. While Esteban Ocon was sixth in FP1 and his teammate Fernando Alonso ninth, FP2 produced much more promising results.

The Spanish driver even split the two currently strongest stables to finish fourth in the standings ahead of Sergio Pérez. And although Ocon repeated his FP1 placing, the important aspect for him and Alpine is that he was able to make some very solid runs on the hard, or hard tyres marked in white.

There was some improvement in performance and probably brake cooling for McLaren, with Lando Norris finishing fifth in opening practice and Daniel Ricciardo eighth. However, the second free practice brought slightly worse results from McLaren’s point of view (Norris 8th, Ricciardo 10th).

For the British driver, however, this may also be due to the switch to medium specification tyres, as in his opening laps of FP2 and also FP1 he had the softest compound marked in red.

Apart from all the teams mentioned above, only two drivers managed to break into the top ten. Valtteri Bottas in the Alfa Romeo rounded off the top ten in the first practice session.

The Finnish driver even managed to improve his position in FP2, with a time of 1::20.055 to finish seventh.

The other driver who managed to finish in the top ten from the rest of the field is Pierre Gasly in the AlphaTauri. The 26-year-old Frenchman finished ninth in the second practice session.

Source: F1 TV