14/03/2025
NEWS STORY
Round 1 of the 2025 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with Friday practice at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Albert Park as teams prepared for Sunday's 58-lap Australian Grand Prix.
FP1 commenced early afternoon with air temps reaching 24 degrees Celsius (75.2 degrees Fahrenheit) - expected to soar even further tomorrow. MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon kicked off track activities with baseline runs on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires.
Proceedings were halted for five minutes while gravel was removed from track, with both drivers switching onto the Red soft compound for their next run. Bearman brought out the second red flag stop of the session, running into gravel and hitting the wall on the exit of turn 10 during his first timed lap - an early finish meant his fastest time on mediums, a 1:19.312, classified P20. Ocon returned to track on used softs for the final minutes of track running, the Frenchman's best time, a 1:19.139, recording P19 at the checkered.
The sun continued to beam down for FP2 and Ocon began the session on medium rubber, continuing to work on setup. A quali sim on new softs produced his fastest lap, a 1:18.034, before returning to mediums for a high fuel run - finishing P19 overall. The team worked tirelessly through the break and the second session to get Bearman back out on track, but unfortunately the Brit wasn't able to get out in time.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 59 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 47 by Ocon with 12 from Bearman.
Ollie Bearman: "I'm sad to have missed all that running today. The team did a great job to try and get the car back out, but we just ran out of time. I made a small mistake in turn 10 which put me a bit wide, and out there it's very bumpy and unfortunately I lost it. I struggled a little bit, but I felt confident - maybe too much - but I felt at home and was building up nicely. FP3 is a long session and then into qualifying, the race will be a bit of a roll of the dice currently."
Esteban Ocon: "It hasn't been the smoothest day for us. It's the first day of the year, it's normal that it goes that way, but we still have more to put together to get correct and exploit the maximum out of the car. I wasn't happy with the balance and how the car felt - we made a step between FP1 and FP2 - but we need more, so hopefully we can do that in FP3 and build on from there."
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "Today was a pretty difficult day, it wasn't the performance we were expecting. We have one indication as to why in FP1, but Ollie crashed so we couldn't completely get to the bottom of why we were uncompetitive, so we need to make another step tonight and then do the best we can tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Albert Park here.