Lewis Hamilton spent the offseason crisscrossing the globe to party with A-list celebrities but Formula One’s reigning champion is adamant there will be no hangover when he returns to work at this week’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
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Fans were streaming out of the grandstands and the leading drivers were out of their cars with minutes left in the session.
Kvyat’s race was more fruitless, as an CU-H failure meant his auto was unable to start.
Under the new system, the slowest drivers were knocked out of qualifying in rolling eliminations every 90 seconds.
Mercedes principal Toto Wolff said the team realized Rosberg’s intermediate tyres were not behaving well but they could not tell him before the accident.
“Everyone is trying to do their best to improve the show and, if we haven’t, we need to discuss it”, he said. In the garage it was do a lap, if it’s good come back, we’ll do a quick change and go again.
“Today isn’t too bad a starting point – much better than where we were this time a year ago”.
Racer. It’s the nickname bestowed on Daniel Ricciardo by long-time personal trainer and close confidante Stuart Smith, the Australian who has played a crucial part behind the scenes in Ricciardo’s rise as a Formula One force in the past three years.
“And we know there’s a good step to come in a few races”, he added.
“To make it into Q3 is good, we expected to more or less be in the top eight”. So eager were teams to maximize time on the track that Manor’s Rio Haryanto and Romain Grosjean of Haas collided in pit lane on their way out of the garages at the start of the hour.
There were also promising performances by Renault in its first race back as a team owner, with both drivers making into the second qualifying session.
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Ricciardo said: “I think at least for the first few races we’re not really going to be in touch with a victory unless we get some rain or something that goes our way so I think from that stage then… the world title will probably be, after five or six races, already probably out of reach…” McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button also made the second session and will start 12th and 13th, respectively, on Sunday.
