Fernando Alonso finished up fastest to round out the opening day of running at the Australian GP in a pair of sessions which was difficult to judge based on the conditions.

Lance Stroll had his qualifying simulation interrupted in the first Free Practice session, while he was not able to get a competitive time in FP2 due to the weather.

FP1 session was red-flagged for a short while due to a GPS issue affecting the circuit, while rain caused heavy disruption to the running in FP2.

Fernando Alonso

“It was a good Friday for us and nice to be back in Australia. In FP1 we concentrated on some test items and ran through our programme smoothly.”

“The afternoon was obviously impacted by the rain, so there is still some work to do tomorrow. We need to learn more about the tyres and the long run pace of the car because there was not much time for that today.”

“So far though the car seems to behave well. The forecast tomorrow looks dry for now, and we would welcome that given we only experienced these conditions in the previous two races.”

Lance Stroll

“Albert Park is a track we all look forward to driving so it was good to get back out there today. The car was feeling good and we used FP1 to test various new parts which gives us plenty of data to look through this evening as we continue to learn about the AMR23.”

“We did not log as many laps as we would have liked during FP2 because of the rain, but it is something that all teams will have struggled with so I do not think it puts us at a disadvantage for the weekend ahead.”

“Thankfully, the weather looks like it will improve tomorrow, but it has been fairly unpredictable today so you never know!”