An interesting day indeed as the Formula One circus fired up their engines for the official start of the 2014 season in Australia. As drivers and teams alike continue to learn new aspects of their cars performance, the pecking order is slowly starting to reveal itself.
Pre-season testing pegged Mercedes as the team to beat; hell Christian Horner went as far as to say that he wouldn’t be surprised if a Merc won the season opener by two laps. Day 1 in Australia seemed to ultimately confirm their competitiveness, but not without a hiccup in Practice 1 when an oil sensor fault on Lewis’ W05 caused his engine to shut down. The team were unable to get the car back in time for a repair; meaning Lewis went into Practice 2 without completing a flying lap.
In the end though, the Mercedes’ drivers marched home with the two fastest laps of the day and without further glitches. Nico Rosberg was 0.157 seconds slower than his teammate.
Williams also showed promise in pre-season testing; and for the first time in a long while there have been a few F1 pundits backing the Grove based outfit. The Bottas-Massa pairing fared well, ending P1 in 3rd and 4th respectively. P2 saw the team focus efforts on the harder compound tyre.
Ferrari were the first team out on track this morning; Fernando Alonso claiming the honour of kicking off the new era of Formula One. The Spaniard fortuitously claimed top spot in P1 after trading fastest laps with McLaren’s Jenson Button. Kimi Raikkonen suffered a few technical glitches, but looked typically disinterested throughout the whole affair, ending 9th and 7th respectively.
Surprisingly enough Red Bull, who completed more distance travelling to and from the hotel than on track during pre-season testing, looked to have made a fair deal of progress with their reliability issues. Maybe not so surprisingly the RB10 was pretty quick when everything fell into place.
Further down the pack it was McLaren, Force India and Toro Rosso who were busiest, completing the most laps across the two sessions.
By the end of P2, only 19 drivers managed to set a competitive time; Kamui Kobayashi’s Caterham was unable to leave the garage due to a “power unit-related fuel system issue”; team-mate Marcus Ericsson was at least able to get onto the circuit, but returned swiftly thanks to a hydraulics problem on his installation lap.
Pastor Maldonado left the garage in his Lotus, but only just as he stopped in the pitlane with a suspected ERS problem. This rounded off an awful day for Lotus as Romain Grosjean was second slowest overall and ploughed his E22 into a wall.
Practice 1 Results:
| Pos | Driver | Team/Car | Time | Gap | Laps |
|
1 |
Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1m31.840s |
20 |
|
|
2 |
Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 1m32.357s | +0.517s |
23 |
|
3 |
Valtteri Bottas | Williams-Mercedes | 1m32.403s | +0.563s |
27 |
|
4 |
Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 1m32.431s | +0.591s |
19 |
|
5 |
Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull-Renault | 1m32.599s | +0.759s |
26 |
|
6 |
Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1m32.604s | +0.764s |
17 |
|
7 |
Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 1m32.793s | +0.953s |
10 |
|
8 |
Kevin Magnussen | McLaren-Mercedes | 1m32.847s | +1.007s |
28 |
|
9 |
Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1m32.977s | +1.137s |
18 |
|
10 |
Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1m33.446s | +1.606s |
30 |
|
11 |
Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes | 1m33.533s | +1.693s |
23 |
|
12 |
Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 1m33.855s | +2.015s |
24 |
|
13 |
Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1m34.272s | +2.432s |
27 |
|
14 |
Esteban Gutierrez | Sauber-Ferrari | 1m35.578s | +3.738s |
7 |
|
15 |
Adrian Sutil | Sauber-Ferrari | 1m36.445s | +4.605s |
13 |
|
16 |
Jules Bianchi | Marussia-Ferrari | 1m40.859s | +9.019s |
6 |
|
17 |
Max Chilton | Marussia-Ferrari | 1m46.922s | +15.082s |
4 |
|
18 |
Marcus Ericsson | Caterham-Renault |
1 |
||
|
19 |
Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes |
1 |
||
|
20 |
Kamui Kobayashi | Caterham-Renault |
1 |
||
|
21 |
Pastor Maldonado | Lotus-Renault |
2 |
||
|
22 |
Romain Grosjean | Lotus-Renault |
Practice 2 Results:
| Pos | Driver | Team/Car | Time | Gap | Laps |
|
1 |
Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1m29.625s |
37 |
|
|
2 |
Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1m29.782s | +0.157s |
31 |
|
3 |
Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1m30.132s | +0.507s |
28 |
|
4 |
Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 1m30.381s | +0.756s |
41 |
|
5 |
Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 1m30.510s | +0.885s |
33 |
|
6 |
Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull-Renault | 1m30.538s | +0.913s |
38 |
|
7 |
Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1m30.898s | +1.273s |
32 |
|
8 |
Valtteri Bottas | Williams-Mercedes | 1m30.920s | +1.295s |
38 |
|
9 |
Kevin Magnussen | McLaren-Mercedes | 1m31.031s | +1.406s |
34 |
|
10 |
Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes | 1m31.054s | +1.429s |
33 |
|
11 |
Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1m31.060s | +1.435s |
35 |
|
12 |
Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 1m31.119s | +1.494s |
31 |
|
13 |
Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 1m31.283s | +1.658s |
36 |
|
14 |
Adrian Sutil | Sauber-Ferrari | 1m32.355s | +2.730s |
36 |
|
15 |
Esteban Gutierrez | Sauber-Ferrari | 1m32.468s | +2.843s |
26 |
|
16 |
Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1m32.495s | +2.870s |
36 |
|
17 |
Jules Bianchi | Marussia-Ferrari | 1m33.486s | +3.861s |
29 |
|
18 |
Romain Grosjean | Lotus-Renault | 1m33.646s | +4.021s |
12 |
|
19 |
Max Chilton | Marussia-Ferrari | 1m34.757s | +5.132s |
29 |
|
20 |
Marcus Ericsson | Caterham-Renault |
1 |
||
|
21 |
Pastor Maldonado | Lotus-Renault | |||
|
22 |
Kamui Kobayashi | Caterham-Renault |



















