What we learned in Friday practice at the Australian GP

Should Australia's skies find themselves desaturated of their celeste tones on Sunday, then Friday's findings in Formula 1's practice sessions will become devalued into mere statistics.

Naturally, the season opener offered the first chance to truly decipher the relative pace of each car; testing, as ever, was suffused by the fog of war as the 10 teams all ran to their own agendas. That Charles Leclerc set the quickest time on Friday will have rewarded Ferrari's finest with a hit of dopamine, and the sense that the scarlet cars can challenge for honours on a Saturday afternoon, but single-lap pace does not mean the season is done and dusted.

Leclerc's chart-topping 1m16.439s put him just 0.124s clear of Oscar Piastri's McLaren, as the Melburnian was conferred a small advantage over team-mate Lando Norris by the end of the qualifying runs, but there's likely more in the McLaren when it comes to qualifying pace.

Norris had, after all, headlined FP1 after prising Carlos Sainz from the top of the leaderboard in the dying embers of 2025's first official session - although the pace had escalated once FP2 entered the present tense.

Qualifying pace

Main Information Additional Data Driver Info Driver Info

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Main Information Additional Data 1  -  2
Cla	Driver	#		Chassis	Engine	Laps	Time	Interval	Tyres	km/h
1	C. Leclerc Ferrari	16		Ferrari	Ferrari	32	1'16.439			248.574
2	O. Piastri McLaren	81		McLaren	Mercedes	30	+0.124 1'16.563	0.124		248.172
3	L. Norris McLaren	4		McLaren	Mercedes	30	+0.141 1'16.580	0.017		248.117
4	Y. Tsunoda RB	22			Red Bull	29	+0.345 1'16.784	0.204		247.457
5	L. Hamilton Ferrari	44		Ferrari	Ferrari	31	+0.420 1'16.859	0.075		247.216
6	I. Hadjar RB	6			Honda	30	+0.580 1'17.019	0.160		246.702
7	M. Verstappen Red Bull Racing	1		Red Bull	Red Bull	22	+0.624 1'17.063	0.044		246.561
8	N. Hulkenberg Sauber	27		Sauber	Ferrari	24	+0.722 1'17.161	0.098		246.248
9	L. Stroll Aston Martin Racing	18		Aston Martin	Mercedes	28	+0.840 1'17.279	0.118		245.872
10	G. Russell Mercedes	63		Mercedes	Mercedes	30	+0.843 1'17.282	0.003		245.863
View full results

It didn't take Leclerc long to get into his groove with the new SF-25 chassis; despite the off-season switch to pull-rod front suspension, which will have significantly redefined the kinematic response that Leclerc is likely used to, his car looked nonetheless stable despite all of the rapid changes of direction.

Ferrari's kerb riding compliance has given Leclerc extra confidence in Melbourne

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Ferrari has tended to perform well at Melbourne; although the Australian circuit might not be as tough on suspension set-ups compared to its other street-track counterparts, the kerb-riding nonetheless rewards compliance. That's a quality that Ferrari has generally found in abundance, meaning that the car is rarely unsettled when it experiences bump steer and causes few major fluctuations in ride height. That ensures the downforce is kept within a range to ensure the drivers - particularly Leclerc - can stamp on the throttle on the exits of corners.

Lewis Hamilton, still in the process of becoming fully integrated at Maranello, needs some time to lean into that quality; his car looked a little more on-edge, with a snappier rear end at times. Leclerc likes a car he can hustle and he has great control over it, and Hamilton just needs more time to get used to that particular trait - if he can be a little more confident with it, he'll find that the car should be quite pleasing to drive versus the Mercedes cars he faced in his latter years in Brackley.

McLaren, meanwhile, looks incredibly close - and judging by the fact that both Norris and Piastri were just outside of a tenth of Leclerc, the MCL39 appears to offer a platform in which top-end qualifying laps are repeatable. There were moments of oversteer as the rear end occasionally fancied stepping out of line, but otherwise the team was relatively pleased with its Friday efforts; to chase pole position, quelling the rear's more inconsistent qualities will be a bonus.

Red Bull's RB21 looked distinctly difficult to squeeze a clean lap out of - even Max Verstappen appeared to be fighting the car

Racing Bulls surprised in getting both cars into the top six; Yuki Tsunoda was well among F1's great and good with his run to fourth, while Isack Hadjar looked to be on the pace straight away. This writer recalls being arguably less than complimentary about his approach, but the Frenchman appears to have good natural speed from the outset. Again, repeatability will be the true test here, but his position at the head of the six-strong rookie pack is nonetheless impressive.

By comparison, Red Bull's RB21 looked distinctly difficult to squeeze a clean lap out of - even Max Verstappen appeared to be fighting the car, particularly as the Dutchman's excellent control has long papered over the cracks when set-up issues had reared their heads. He managed to rifle his way into seventh in the timing order after a few attempts, but that it took so long to put the lap together suggests that the car isn't an easy one to master. Liam Lawson's lowly position, 17th in FP2, lends credence to this idea.

Mercedes failed to get a tune out of the soft tyres on its own qualifying sims, and thus showed relatively little mark-up on its runs with medium tyres. However, the W16 seems to be much more at home in race trim - as can be seen from the average FP2 long runs.

Norris topped the long run pace data

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Average FP2 long-run times

Early indications are that both McLaren and Mercedes have the best machines for a swift Sunday drive. Norris' average stint was the best during the longer runs, but Russell's hard-tyre stint was also impressive. Tyre deltas (Norris on mediums, Russell on hards) might suggest that Russell has the advantage, although Norris' mediums were past their best when he began his 11-lap stint at the wheel.

"I would say it's pretty encouraging; the pace was pretty solid," Piastri offered after FP2. "There's still a few things to try and iron out and make the car feel a bit nicer, but I think the underlying pace seems strong, so I'm pretty happy with the day's work. I think it's gonna be pretty different for the next two days, so how much today means we don't know, but it feels pretty good."

For a bit of team-mate comparison, Piastri's long-run average was about 0.2s behind Norris in his own stint of comparable length, while Antonelli was just shy of 0.4s per lap away from Russell.

Mercedes appears to have taken a step with its tyre management on long runs over the off-season, a change it needed to make following the team's tendency to burn its tyres up in warmer climates last year. Perhaps the pendulum has swung in such a way that it now makes the snap warm-up for a qualifying lap a bit more difficult, but it should at least give the team a bit more to fight with on a Sunday afternoon.

Ferrari is not far behind. Reports in testing that its long runs were hampered by tyre drop-off don't appear especially conclusive here, but that's down to the shorter stint lengths versus what we'll see in the race. In his 13-lap stint, Hamilton was just 0.09s seconds per lap away from Leclerc's average best. Red Bull was less than a tenth behind, but the Milton Keynes outfit was not especially pleased after FP2 - Lawson conceded that the team was just "too slow" at the moment and that its Friday performance was going to ladle extra work onto the engineers' plates in getting together a package more cohesive for Saturday.

Red Bull's woes appeared to continue on the opening day of track action at Albert Park

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Verstappen added his view that "the balance wasn't completely out, no massive or major problems, but somehow the grip is not coming alive". Although the RB21s seemed reasonable in the second sector, this has little beyond a flat-out stretch along the lake side - the Dutchman stated that both sectors one and three were difficult to get a handle on.

Without tweaks, Red Bull could be forgiven for feeling under pressure as Williams impressed in FP1 and FP2. Not only does the FW47 appear to handle well, without the bucking back-end that it suffered with so often in 2024, but long-run pace also seemed to be a genuine step above its midfield rivals. Carlos Sainz's long run put it above Racing Bulls, as Albon pitted midway through his own race sim and thus his shorter stints were much less comparable, while Tsunoda put together an impressively consistent run in his VCARB 02 to suggest that Racing Bulls' latest offering handled well.

Forecasts suggest that Sunday's going to be poncho weather at the very least; in those circumstances, it'll reward whoever's brave enough to take a punt on a wet set-up at the expense of qualifying

Sauber is the surprise here, owing to Nico Hulkenberg's solid stint that put him among the midfielders. He was just a smidgen above Jack Doohan's stint; Pierre Gasly did a soft-tyre long-run and thus should not be compared due to the considerable drop-off in tyre performance. Aston Martin looked steady, but slow, while Haas showed very little as Oliver Bearman's FP1 shunt loaded all of Friday's work onto Esteban Ocon's shoulders.

But this is all moot in the event of rain. Forecasts suggest that Sunday's going to be poncho weather at the very least; in those circumstances, it'll reward whoever's brave enough to take a punt on a wet set-up at the expense of qualifying - which should remain dry, all being well. If the heavens open it'll be a game of compromise, and the closeness of the field might even offer a surprise winner.

Sunshine on Saturday could be a set-up headache if rain arrives on Sunday

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images