{"id":19521,"date":"2022-04-08T12:04:24","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T16:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=19521"},"modified":"2022-04-08T12:04:24","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T16:04:24","slug":"f1-australian-grand-prix-leclerc-verstappen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=19521","title":{"rendered":"Leclerc fastest in second practice for Australian Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia<\/a> \u2014 Ferrari<\/a> driver Charles Leclerc was fastest in Friday’s second practice session for the Australian Grand Prix<\/a>, with Formula One champion Max Verstappen<\/a> right behind in second.<\/p>\n

Leclerc had a time of 1<\/a> minute, 18.978 seconds on the revamped Albert Park layout, with Verstappen .245 seconds behind in his Red Bull<\/a> car. Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, who led after the first practice session, was third.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday has been quite positive. The grip on track was good and the bumps have definitely improved. It\u2019s a bit smoother and it makes the track nicer as well because you can actually attack the corners a bit more,” Verstappen said. \u201cWe are still a tiny bit off Ferrari, but I think this weekend we can maybe make it a little bit closer.”<\/p>\n

Local driver Daniel Ricciardo of McLaren<\/a> was 10th fastest, and Lewis Hamilton<\/a> was 13th in his Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There will be another practice session on Saturday ahead of afternoon qualifying for Sunday’s race.<\/p>\n

Leclerc won the opening race of the season in Bahrain and Verstappen took the second in Saudi Arabia, both in March.<\/p>\n

In a major renovation to the Melbourne track, five corners were re-profiled at Albert Park and two were removed completely, meaning practice times were generally five seconds faster than in previous races.<\/p>\n

The practice sessions Friday came 756 days after the 2020 race was canceled at the last minute because of the COVID-19 pandemic with spectators lining up at the gates for the first practice session on March 13 of that year.<\/p>\n

Sainz and Leclerc were 1-2 in the first practice, but Sainz cautioned against expecting too much of his Ferrari team. That’s despite Leclerc’s win and a second place and Sainz a third and a second in the first two races.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep saying that Red Bull and Mercedes are the favorites because we haven\u2019t been in a title fight in the last few years,\u201d the Spaniard said. \u201cWe are still super cautious. We know we have put together on track a great car, but these two teams have been in the title fight for the last two or three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey know how much they need to improve, they know exactly what they need to do. And we maybe are lacking that bit of experience.”<\/p>\n

Leclerc said similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we are leading … we have only done two races so it\u2019s still pretty early to think about the championship,\u201d Leclerc said.<\/p>\n

Leclerc said before the first practice session that he felt the track renovations might give an advantage to Red Bull.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our car, I would prefer to stay with the old layout but that\u2019s only from a performance point of view,\u201d Leclerc said. \u201cThe only reason why I\u2019m saying that is because Red Bull seems to be very strong in the straight lines … and there are quite a lot of straight lines in general now, so we might struggle a bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n

After two races, Leclerc leads the drivers’ championship with 45 points, followed by Sainz with 33 and Verstappen with 25.<\/p>\n

Verstappen hopes to improve on that after Sunday’s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the long run I think everything worked well, and we\u2019ve made some good improvements today,” Verstappen said after the second session. “We are heading in a good direction and we\u2019ll try to build from there tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

More AP auto racing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was fastest in Friday’s second practice session for the Australian Grand Prix, with Formula One champion Max Verstappen right behind in second. Leclerc had a time of 1 minute, 18.978 seconds on the revamped Albert Park layout, with Verstappen .245 seconds behind in his Red Bull car. Ferrari […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}