14/03/2025
NEWS STORY
The team began the 2025 season on Friday in Melbourne with our new line-up of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli taking to the circuit.
The team evaluated all three compounds across the two sessions, although we were an outlier in being the sole team to run the Hard compound in FP2. That made the evaluation of relative performance compared to our competitors more challenging across both the single lap and the long runs.
George ended the day the quickest of our two drivers, with rookie Kimi conducting himself well and gaining valuable data and experience over the course of the day. The team will now work hard overnight and in the simulator back at Brackley to evaluate changes ahead of Saturday. Tomorrow sees the first Qualifying session of the year take place, with significantly warmer conditions expected and a likely ambient temperature over 30°C.
George Russell: It was an interesting first day of the season. We looked particularly quick on the Hard and Medium compounds, and the overall balance of the car felt strong. On the Soft tyre, we didn't improve as much as you might expect. That is something we will evaluate overnight but, with the track temperature over 40°C today, that may have played a part. It is encouraging that there is inherent pace in the car though, as we've seen on the C3 and C4 compounds. Our focus is now unlocking that pace across all three tyre compounds and hopefully we can do that tomorrow.
It felt good to be back out on track here; the fans are always incredible in Melbourne and it's a fun circuit to drive. I had a couple of moments out there but was able to keep it out the wall. I am confident that we can find the improvements we are looking for overnight and have a smoother day on Saturday.
Kimi Antonelli: It was a positive first day of the season. Overall, I was pleased with how everything went. I'm getting more and more confident with each lap and continue to build my learning. The long run in FP2 was good and gives us a strong platform for the rest of the weekend. We've got some work to do on the single lap to find a bit more performance; that is mainly linked to getting the tyres in the right window and something we will focus on improving overnight. We've got plenty of data to work with to do that ahead of Saturday.
It is slightly too early to make any predictions on our relative performance. We don't know what the other teams are doing, and we were offset on tyre strategy today. The car was feeling good though and we will see what we can do in Qualifying tomorrow.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: Today was a solid start to the new season. We were able to run cleanly in both sessions and gather good data across all compounds. Having come from a surprisingly cold three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain, it was useful to continue building our knowledge of the W16 on a different type of circuit and in warmer conditions.
The car was behaving well, particularly on the long run and the harder C3 and C4 compounds. Looking at the headline times, we've got some work to do on improving our single lap performance on the Soft compound ahead of Qualifying. We've already got some areas of focus though and are confident we can take steps to do that overnight.
As was expected ahead of the weekend, it looks close between several teams at the front. We were slightly offset with our tyre choice in FP2 so it's hard to predict the relative order. What we can say though is that even small improvements will likely make a big difference. We will be working hard this evening, and in conjunction with the teams back at Brackley and Brixworth, to do this.
Check out our Friday gallery from Albert Park here.