{"id":42739,"date":"2026-03-06T12:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T12:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=42739"},"modified":"2026-03-06T12:04:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T12:04:42","slug":"piastri-edges-antonelli-in-second-australian-gp-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=42739","title":{"rendered":"Piastri edges Antonelli in second Australian GP practice"},"content":{"rendered":"
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri powered to the quickest time ahead of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in second practice for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Friday as drivers grappled with sweeping new engine changes.<\/p>\n

The Australian sent his home crowd into a frenzy by blasting round the Albert Park circuit in one minute 19.729secs on soft tyres, 0.214 clear of Antonelli.<\/p>\n

Antonelli’s teammate, pre-season favourite George Russell, came third, a fraction clear of Ferrari’s seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc, in the other Ferrari, was fifth with four-time world champion Max Verstappen sixth after spending half the session in the garage having stalled his Red Bull.<\/p>\n

McLaren world champion Lando Norris clawed his way to seventh, more than one second off the pace, after managing only seven laps in first practice due to gearbox issues.<\/p>\n

Racing Bulls’ impressive rookie Arvid Lindblad banked an eye-opening eighth, a place ahead of Isack Hadjar — the man he replaced and who is now Verstappen’s teammate.<\/p>\n

It was the first proper test of far-reaching new engine and chassis rules with the hybrid power units now 50 percent traditional combustion and 50 percent electric.<\/p>\n

With a finite amount of energy available, drivers had to carefully manage their batteries on each lap, working out when to deploy while building it up back through braking.<\/p>\n

The challenge of Albert Park is its long sweeping straights, which deplete batteries, and relatively few twisty turns to brake and charge it up again.<\/p>\n

There have also been changes to the aerodynamics of the cars, which are lighter and smaller.<\/p>\n

On a perfect Melbourne afternoon, Nico Hulkenberg led them out, but it was Hamilton who set the opening time.<\/p>\n

Verstappen had an inauspicious start, stalling in the pit lane, while Russell clipped Lindblad on his way out and needed a new nose.<\/p>\n

Verstappen’s car was wheeled back into the garage, apparently stuck in gear, where he stayed for almost half an hour.<\/p>\n

The drivers started on a mix of medium and hard tyres and Russell soon upstaged Hamilton as they jockeyed for places.<\/p>\n

At the halfway mark it was Italy’s Antonelli, Russell, Hamilton and Piastri.<\/p>\n

Russell locked up and hit the gravel at Turn 3 as he pushed hard, with Hamilton doing the same, but they both kept enough momentum to get back on track.<\/p>\n

Piastri blasted to the top of the timesheets on soft tyres with 25 minutes left as Verstappen began climbing the leaderboard.<\/p>\n

But the Dutchman was trying too hard and careered into the gravel at Turn 10 with debris flying off his car, ending his day early.<\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso clocked 18 laps and Lance Stroll 13 as the troubled Aston Martins battle extreme vibration caused by the new Honda power unit.<\/p>\n

Newcomers Cadillac — the 11th team on the grid — also struggled with Valtteri Bottas 19th and Sergio Perez last.<\/p>\n

In first practice, Leclerc outpaced Hamilton by nearly half a second with Verstappen and Hadjar third and fourth.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri powered to the quickest time ahead of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in second practice for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Friday as drivers grappled with sweeping new engine changes. The Australian sent his home crowd into a frenzy by blasting round the Albert Park circuit in one minute 19.729secs on soft tyres, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}