Friday practice may have offered a glimmer of hope that Red Bull is not that far ahead of its F1 rivals in Melbourne. Here's what we learned from practice for the AusGP
The various interruptions and delays on Friday mean the teams currently lack almost all of their usual practice data, which means they will have to make plenty of educated guesswork overnight regarding what final tweaks to make for FP3, which is expected to be dry. Expect them to dry and gather as much qualifying and long-run data as they can in the final 60-minute session to replace their Friday night predictions.
The passing time means the surface has changed compared to last year, where Ferrari dominated the race and Leclerc defeated Verstappen before the Dutchman's late DNF, as Red Bull got things wrong on how to keep the tyres from graining within a big track evolution concern and its red rival got things right.
Therefore, if Red Bull doesn't make the right adjustments and continues to have wild moments tomorrow, there's the chance of an upset in qualifying. Plus, it must correct its 2022 graining problems for the race. Countering this is the fact Verstappen led FP1 by 0.433s, albeit on a track surface that will change massively before Sunday's race as more rubber goes down…
Ferrari concentrated on trying to fix the race tyre management issues that plagued it in Bahrain and Jeddah during FP1 – a shrewd move given it can rival Red Bull in qualifying. And, encouragingly for Ferrari fans, Leclerc reckoned"it felt like we were going in a right direction" on that factor. He did though caution:"That doesn't mean that we have the same pace as our competitors, as they still seem to have the upper hand for now.
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