2026 Australian Grand Prix - Friday

Intriguing Friday as new season gets underway

• The next generation of F1 officially kicked off with Friday at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
• After nine days of testing across Barcelona and Bahrain, the field took to the Albert Park Circuit for two hours of practice.
• With all new regulations and cars, with changes on the chassis and power unit side, the day was always going to be one of discovery.
• That proved to be the case with lots of learning gained in FP1; George finished the session P7 with Kimi P8 and both drivers dealing with an understeer limited balance.
• After making refinements between the sessions, FP2 proved more fruitful with the team able to complete a solid long run on the Hard tyre and ended P2 with Kimi and P3 with George on the single lap.
• Despite a better second hour of running, the ultimate pace was set by the McLaren of Oscar Piastri with the Ferraris also looking strong throughout.

Kimi Antonelli

It was a difficult start to our day in FP1, where we had to focus predominantly on improving our battery deployment. That left less time to work on set-up, and the car balance didn’t feel fantastic with lots of understeer. We worked hard between the sessions though and enjoyed a much stronger FP2.

I am looking forward to the rest of the weekend. We are hopefully in the mix at the front, but everyone is learning so much with every session and every lap that what is true now, might not be true tomorrow. We will keep pushing hard to make sure we get the most out of the car and see where that leaves us tomorrow in Qualifying and Sunday for the Grand Prix.

George Russell

We didn’t have the smoothest first Friday of the season. FP1 was a tough session where we were struggling to optimise our battery harvesting and deployment. That demanded most of our attention and we therefore couldn’t get stuck into our set-up work until much later in the hour. When we did, the car had a lot of understeer, and we also didn’t have the time to put together a long run.

Thankfully, we made a positive step for FP2 and had a much better session. The car felt more put together and we completed a good amount of single lap and long run work. That puts us in a decent position for the rest of the weekend. The front of the field looks very competitive and we will have to take another step overnight if we are to be in the fight for pole position. Let’s see what we can do.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Overall the day finished in a decent place, but our first session was very messy. We had a few configuration issues on the power unit side that took a couple of runs to unpick. On top of that, the balance of the car wasn't great for either driver. That affects our cornering speeds, which in turn impacts the deployment.

We had a good recovery ahead of FP2; the power unit was working as intended and the car was responding a lot better after a few set-up changes. Having finished the morning somewhat on the back foot, we were able to put together a solid programme with decent long runs from both drivers. That's given us good information ahead of the race on Sunday but there are still a few areas that we need to make progress on overnight. We're into that work already and hopefully can find a bit more pace to deliver a strong team result in Qualifying tomorrow.