After 20 minutes of FP2, Alonso had the fastest lap with a time of 1 minute, 18.887 seconds. Verstappen was in third place, 0.615 seconds behind Alonso and Leclerc.
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Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin set the fastest time in FP2 before rain began to fall over Albert Park, with Charles Leclerc of Ferrari coming in second and Max Verstappen of Red Bull coming in third. Verstappen set the pace in Melbourne’s opening practise for the 2023 Australian Grand Prix ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez. But before Logan Sargeant’s Williams stopped and brought out the second stoppage of that hour, the opening session was also stopped by a red flag raised by a lack of GPS.
After 20 minutes of FP2, Alonso had the fastest lap with a time of 1 minute, 18.887 seconds. Verstappen was in third place, 0.615 seconds behind Alonso, and Leclerc was in second place, 0.445 seconds behind him. Every driver was in the pits due to the rain, so Carlos Sainz (P5) and Leclerc broke the silence with some sighting runs on soft tyres. However, they both agreed that the track was too wet for slick running. Esteban Ocon (P6) and Hamilton (P13) of Alpine emerged on intermediate tyres shortly after the Ferraris braved the track on soft tyres in the rain, and the rest of the field quickly followed. Drivers enjoyed their first runs in the 2023 cars in the wet conditions, and the track was bustling with activity even though the field duly remained unchanged.
Although there were no representative qualifying simulation runs in FP2, Mercedes’ George Russell finished P4, 0.785 seconds off the lead, and Sainz was in P5 with 0.808 seconds separating him from first place. While Perez took P7 in the other Red Bull as the first driver more than a second off the fastest time, Esteban Ocon finished sixth just 0.030s off the Ferrari.
Prior to FP2, Yuki Tsunoda used the second of the four allotted gearboxes, and the Japanese racer finished 11th ahead of Valtteri Bottas of the Alfa Romeo team. Oscar Piastri, a local hero, finished behind Hamilton in 13th place and was warmly greeted once more by the enthusiastic crowd on Friday. Zhou Guanyu, driving the other Alfa Romeo, finished in 15th place.
You can’t help but feel bad for Daniel Ricciardo. After a heart-breaking exit from Formula One in 2022, Ricciardo joined Red Bull Racing as their reserve driver with the hope of making it back on to the grid in the near future. However, when asked whether the Aussie could make it back to the pinnacle of motorsports, former F1 world champion Alan Jones answered in the negative as per GP Fans. Ricciardo finished the 2022 season with McLaren in P11 on the driver’s championship table, scoring only 37 points.
Despite being a race-winner with the papaya team, Zak Brown and his men had seen enough and decided to swap one Aussie for another as they gave the second seat to rookie Oscar Piastri. Now, McLaren have been quite woeful this season, which could mean that Ricciardo’s car last season had way too much reliability issues for him to handle. This would mean that the Aussie was not to blame for the large part. However, eyebrows were raised as his teammate Lando Norris finished P7 on the driver’s championship table with 122 points.
