The first practice of the 2024 Australian Grand Prix has been finished earlier due to Alexander Albon crashing out of the session and spreading debris into the track.
Albon crashed at turn 8 with 19 minutes to go into the session, and walked out of his car uninjured.
The Williams driver took too much curb and lost the car, heavily crashing into the wall outside of turn 8 and damaging his suspension. He was p10 at the time with the medium compounds.
Practice 1 began and both Mercedes drivers immediately complained about long brake pedals – first George Russell and then Lewis Hamilton. They both struggled through the session and placed times toward the bottom of the charts.
Fernando Alonso had the first scary moment of the session, as he slightly lost his Aston Martin through turn 10 and went into the gravel, quickly recovering. Logan Sargeant was behind him.
The struggle continued, as Russell also lost it and cut through the grass between turn 9 and 10 with 20 minutes to go.
Immediately after, it was time for Valtteri Bottas to have his moment – the number 77 spun through turn 9 and went into the gravel at the outside of turn 10, but recovered and went into the pits with a destroyed set of soft compound tires. Then, the Albon crash followed.
The session resumed with exactly 9 minutes to go after an impressively quick work from the track officials.
Hamilton lost the rear immediately after starting his fast lap at turn 1, quite literally mowing the lawn as he cut through, but suffered no damage.
The session was topped by McLaren’s Lando Norris with a time of 1:18.564 on the soft compound.
Both Red Bull cars seemed a bit uncomfortable around the track, although Max Verstappen finished in 2nd, leading teammate Sergio Perez who achieved P6.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc led the team in P4 by 0.035s, with Sainz in P8 by 0.122s to the leader.
Mercedes suffered but hope to improve their set-up for the second practice.
The bottom of the field was dominated (of course, not in a good way) by both Sauber cars, with Guanyu Zhou on top by over 1.420s to the top.