F1: Alonso tops rain-hit Practice 2 in Melbourne

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Light rain hit the Albert Park circuit about 15-minutes into the 60-minute Practice 2 session for the Australian GP F1 race, which slowed lap times.

While it never rained hard enough to require full wet tires, drivers did strap on the Intermediate tires halfway thru the session.

Aston Martin ace Fernando Alonso had the fastest lap at 1m18.887s before the rain hit, and that held up as the fastest time of the session.

Last year’s Australian GP race winner, Charles Leclerc, was 2nd fastest 0.445s behind the Spaniard in his #16 Ferrari.

Max Verstappen, who led Practice 1 in his Red Bull Honda, was 3rd quick, 0.615s behind

George Russell in the #63 Mercedes was 4th, 0.785s back and Carlos Sainz Jr. rounded out the top-5 in the #55 Ferrari, 0.808s behind Alonso.

American Logan Sargeant got the Williams screw.  His car died in Practice 1 and the crew was unable to find the problem in time for the 2nd practice, so he never even turned a single lap.

Conditions catch out drivers even before the rain

Before the rain even fell in FP2, FP1 saw a number of offs as drivers explored the limits of the circuit.

Wind was swirling around parts of the Albert Park circuit and a number of drivers found themselves running wide.

Yuki Tsunoda had the biggest off of all, sliding backwards through the grass and gravel trap at turn one, but he luckily avoided hitting the wall.

Kevin Magnussen also found himself cutting the grass during the session, while defending champion Max Verstappen was not exempt as he got in a spin during FP1.

Naturally, with the rain arriving in FP2, drivers found themselves sliding about as they tried to stay on slicks for as long as possible, and eventually the rain curtailed dry running.

Representative qualifying data limited

Fernando Alonso was top of the timesheets in FP2 after the first third of the session but then the heavens opened and from there on no one would put in a quicker time.

While the rain gave the drivers an opportunity to experience their 2023 cars for the first time in wet conditions, we now have limited data on which to work with that is truly representative of qualifying.

FP2 is often seen as the session with the most similarities to qualifying as it is run at the same time, just a day earlier, but the conditions tomorrow are expected to be a lot drier, and so the teams are going into the weekend with one hand tied behind their backs.

They’ll get as much information as they can in FP3 tomorrow, but with that happening earlier in the day, track conditions will still change between then and qualy.

As with data for qualifying, there was not a lot collected around long-run pace for the weekend either, meaning teams are going to have to pack a lot into FP3 tomorrow.

The punctuated FP1 session, followed by the effectively curtailed FP2 session, means that no-one was really able to go on serious long runs and establish where their race pace is.

Rain isn’t expected to be a factor for the rest of the weekend.

Practice 2 Results