00:00Mario Andretti at the rear of the Cadillac Garage, the Mach 26 chassis.
00:05Mario Andretti Cadillac chassis.
00:08Well done, team.
00:09I couldn't think of a better person to honour that start.
00:14This is Oscar Piastri, but he's in trouble.
00:17Yeah, I'm idling, but I've got no trouble.
00:25Oh, dear.
00:26The racing balls there at the end of the pit lane.
00:28And that is properly sized Limblad, rookie for this season.
00:32The only rookie on the grid this season.
00:34And the man who did the most amount of laps in Rarain 2 test.
00:39And it looks like he's stranded there.
00:42So there he is.
00:44And we can focus on him.
00:45There's something that's still not right.
00:47The power delivery's not right.
00:49Something's not right.
00:50Something's not right.
00:51The first radio message from a driver in 2026 complaining that the power delivery is not right.
00:56We're going to hear a lot of that.
01:05That didn't sound good.
01:06It didn't sound good at all.
01:08It doesn't look like it.
01:10When does he get going?
01:11All shifts.
01:11It is all shifts.
01:12It doesn't feel right.
01:13They're that bad.
01:14They're that bad.
01:17So Lando Norris also having problems.
01:19He's getting whirled into the garage.
01:21Jenson, you fell for it.
01:22First race of the season.
01:24Charles Leclerc behind him.
01:26We'll cross the line in a moment.
01:28And we'll see what this next time is.
01:30It's fastest.
01:311.22.08.
01:33Two tenths ahead of Max Verstappen.
01:36It's a mess because not only they got all their problems correctly because Lance Stroll is still in the garage.
01:42He's about to go out and do some more testing.
01:43But they need Alonso's data to try and get on top as much as they can.
01:47Time's tumbling all the time.
01:49Isaac Hadjar goes fastest.
01:51Now we're on board with Max Verstappen heading down towards turn three.
01:55Car number three for this year.
01:57And there's a lock-up for Max Verstappen.
01:59And don't be surprised if we see a lot of lock-ups throughout the course of this season.
02:04Why, Anthony?
02:05Well, it's a combination of things, Croft.
02:07Downforce reduced by about 30% this year.
02:10And drag falls by approximately 55%.
02:14Wow.
02:15It's big, isn't it?
02:15Yeah.
02:16Well, isn't that lovely to see a Red Bull car that quick?
02:19And it's not just Max Verstappen.
02:21So there's a team boss there.
02:23The ninth driver, Isaac Hadjar, to move from Fienza to Milton Keynes.
02:28And Loren Bekis did that himself.
02:29And there's Valtteri Bottas getting all tangled up with his former team mate there, Lewis Hamilton.
02:34Okay.
02:36And I think above any other driver, he drives to the regulations as they are at that time.
02:43And to the driving standards, guidelines, etc.
02:44Carlos Sainz was thinking about going around the outside before turn 10.
02:51Yeah.
02:51And then got a bit caught behind Pierre Gasly.
02:54And you know what?
02:54He's confused by what those rear lights are doing on the outfit.
02:58They're not working correctly.
02:59You shouldn't just have one light flashing on the left-hand side like that.
03:02So he was unsure if the car was actually harvesting energy in the regeneration mode.
03:08Where are you going, Franco?
03:09Yeah.
03:09You know, you can catch a slide.
03:11Whereas with previous cars, with the ground effects, you got oversteer.
03:15It was gone.
03:16Absolutely.
03:16So you can see how light the car is as he's even turning into that corner.
03:21And, yeah, you're absolutely right.
03:24And so they're kind of more forgiving.
03:28So we were expecting to be a lot slower this year.
03:32Mirror, mirror on the floor.
03:34Yeah.
03:34So it was just the mirror, not the whole assembly of the...
03:39Yeah, look, there it goes.
03:40Wow.
03:41Smash it.
03:42Or not, as the case might have been there, to be fair.
03:45Better than they smash, do they?
03:46Get as much charge back into that battery now in these final two corners to send you on to the
03:52final straight.
03:53On the push lap, you'll be depleting your battery all the way to 0% by the time you cross
03:58the line.
03:58And there it goes.
03:59You'll slow down.
04:00And a lot of it's instinctive, though, isn't it?
04:02It's like if you...
04:03An engineer once asked me, how do you know when to brake if it starts raining and you're on slick
04:08tyres?
04:09Why don't you all just go on?
04:11If you know the braking points at 100m forward in the dry, but it starts raining now,
04:14why don't you all just sail off the track?
04:16And I couldn't actually answer the question.
04:18I just, well, somehow...
04:19But you're immersed in conversation, so you probably didn't hear me.
04:23Isaac Hadjar, meanwhile, down the straight, let a car go.
04:28And then that car, you could see the lights flashing, regenning, and that might have been the big lockup.
04:33Yeah, that's what it was.
04:33He then went off to the ground and grass.
04:36We were just talking about braking zones, braking points,
04:38and that definitely was a visual distraction for Hadjar.
04:42Yeah.
04:42He's let someone go thinking, right, you're on a fast lap.
04:48It certainly was.
04:50And there's not much runoff area down there for these big lockups.
04:53Lewis' rough ride.
04:54And you know what?
04:55It doesn't look like much from on-board, but off-board, you really saw the car jump out.
04:59This is going to be a great shot, isn't it?
05:00It's always been a troublesome curb, this one.
05:04And it's the way the curb stops and the tarmac starts.
05:07Are those the same lap?
05:08Lewis Hamilton, eight pole positions he's got here in Melbourne, which is a record for this circuit.
05:15A quick couple of wins, too, and he might be about to put in the fastest lap.
05:19He's getting a lovely slipstream behind Pierre Casley, just to help his ending to that lap.
05:24He does go faster than Max Verstappen by just over five one-hundredths of a second.
05:28That's not normally a good place to stop.
05:30Well, we saw how much...
05:31Okay, it's not...
05:32It wasn't the curb, it's the...
05:34You see the yellow flashing lights?
05:35That's a new thing for this year, as well.
05:37If the car stops sideways, the drivers can actually see.
05:40Yeah, hydraulic pressure, hydraulic pressure.
05:47Hence stopping the car as quickly as possible, because if you lose hydraulic pressure,
05:51you can very easily damage the power unit and the gearbox.
05:54If they've stopped sideways in poor visibility, it's to stop drivers, yeah, smashing into the side of the car.
06:01So this...
06:02Listen to this.
06:04Oh, that looks heavy.
06:08Yeah, because in those moments, you're not just driving a car with no power steering.
06:14You're having to push the fluid manually through the power steering system without it active.
06:19So it becomes almost impossible to turn, especially at higher speed when the downforce is there.
06:24So, yeah, it's done a good job to recover...
06:27Get into a safe position, at least, for the marshals to do their thing
06:30and recover the car.
06:31And he stops, actually, right by the marshall post and by the gate, so they can push that car in.
06:37So good track knowledge.
06:38It's very good.
06:39Do you want to take us through the rest?
06:40Yeah.
06:40Oh!
06:42Sergio Perez down at turn three.
06:44They've got some flat spots there on the front.
06:47Oscar would have probably had to lift off there, because there would have been yellow flags as he came through.
06:53Yeah, definitely.
06:54So he's going to have to nurse that one back now as Perez to...
06:58That's going to be such a rough ride, bumpy ride for him.
07:01It's surprising, though, because turn three exit, I'm guessing he's oversteered or...
07:07He already had the flat spots.
07:09You see the vibrations before turning in, and he's lost it as he on the exit?
07:13Entry?
07:15Oh, no, he's got an issue.
07:16That's not normal.
07:17Yeah, that was not driving.
07:18That's not the rears.
07:19Yeah.
07:20That is off-throttable.
07:21Is that like a long-stroll by a moment?
07:24Yeah, playing a lot of fennel braking.
07:26Off-throttable.
07:27Grab the rear brakes.
07:30It's a great team for a young driver, where you can learn your trade, and, you know, he's driving
07:38for a team that have been here multiple times with rookie drivers, and they know how to...
07:43Yeah, they're in their element doing this, yeah.
07:46Crosses the line, goes fifth fastest.
07:48Wow.
07:48Slower traffic than he might have had to have navigated there.
07:52Charles Leclerc's got a clear track in front of him.
07:54Is this the fastest time in the session?
07:55It is, you know.
07:56Yeah.
07:56By half a second from Lewis Hamilton.
07:59Charles Leclerc has absolutely hit the ground running and flying here so far this weekend.
08:05Checkered flag will be out in 15 seconds time.
08:09This will be Oscar Piastri's fastest lap of the session.
08:12Lost a bit of time in the middle sector.
08:14Where's he going to end up?
08:15Six fastest to second off the pace.
08:17Even though he was quickest in the first part and quickest for him in the final part two.
08:22And that is your checkered flag after 60 minutes of running here for FP1.
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