The resurgence of the McLaren-less Nyck De Vries continued among the yacht-webbed glamour of Monaco, and the Principality did more than play host to a Dutch siege. Nicholas Latifi encountered the first real bump of his F2 season, while Jack Aitken was force fed a Calpol bottle’s worth of bad luck, at the hands of Mahaveer Raghunathan.
MONTE CARLO, MONACO – MAY 24: Car of Callum Ilott (GBR, SAUBER JUNIOR TEAM BY CHAROUZ) being pushed the pit lane by marshals during the Monaco at Monte Carlo on May 24, 2019 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Jerry Andre / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
The race began with Callum Ilott stalling on the grid. Unable to re-start, he was sent to the back of grid – cruelly denied a chance at the win from second place. The gird took another formation lap, reducing the race length. On the second start attempt Mick Schumacher valiantly commenced a fightback from fifth after dropping back from third due to a wheelspin-riddled start. A move on Anthoine Hubert at the tricky Mirabeau corner was arguably the race’s finest.
Schumacher would be involved in another incident but this time for the wrong reasons. Latifi’s shot of bravery went wrong with his attempt to overtake into Loews corner, only to find Schumacher wasn’t planning on leaving the door open for him. Both were lucky to make it out of the incident relatively unscathed; no damage to Schumacher’s Prema while Latifi’s DAMS suffered a minor front wing break.
Schumacher may have been the innocent party in the Latifi incident, but not long after he would cause a much more severe accident of his own. Attempting to overtake Tatiana Calderon into Rascasse, the Ferrari academy driver, misjudging the admittedly wide apex, hit Calderon and leading to both cars stalling. The red flag was brought out as the cars behind Calderon and Schumacher had to park behind the pair, and confusion reigned supreme.
MONTE CARLO, MONACO – MAY 24: Anthoine Hubert (FRA, BWT ARDEN) and Sean Gelael (IDN,PREMA RACING) during the red flag during the Monaco at Monte Carlo on May 24, 2019 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Glenn Dunbar / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
Once the race resumed, the cars that had pitted under red flag conditions were classed as being a lap down, much to the bemusement of the drivers and teams, while conduct under the red flag period itself was declared for investigation after the race. Schumacher was given both a five-second time penalty for cutting the track and a drive-through for the incident with Calderon.
Latifi, not deterred by the last time, went for a similar Loews corner lunge on Hubert, but while it was unsuccessful he was able to bail out of it without contact. Meanwhile, after earlier in the race where Aitken was held up to the tune of 20 seconds by the glacial Raghunathan, who had blocked him in qualifying the day before, the final blow was exacted when Raghunathan rammed the rear diffuser of Aitken and sent him into the Loews wall.
The final piece of action was left to Juan Manuel Correa, who binned his car at the swimming pool section to sprinkle flakes of carbon fibre on a Monaco feature race packed with action. And the one to enjoy a first slice? That was De Vries, who had been nothing short of masterful. Latifi might now just know the identity of his strongest challenger for the rest of the season.
Featured image courtesy of Jerry Andre / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship
The 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 is nearly upon us with qualifying completed and all but one of the practice sessions run. As always, the Indy 500 is one of the most important races of the season and, with double points on offer, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Indy GP winner Simon Pagenaud took the honour of pole position last weekend, continuing his remarkable upturn in form after a fairly dreadful start to the season. Starting alongside him on the front row will be the Ed Carpenter Racing duo of Ed Carpenter himself and Spencer Pigot, the latter of whom was the favourite to take pole after Saturday’s running.
Front Row qualifiers and their families (L-R) Spencer Pigot, Ed Carpenter, Simon Pagenaud. Credit: Chris Owens/IndyCar
The other ECR car of Ed Jones heads up the second row, followed by rookie sensation Colton Herta and last year’s Indy 500 champion Will Power. The last three of the Fast Nine drivers fill the third row with Sebastien Bourdais heading championship leader Josef Newgarden and 2016 Indy 500 champion Alexander Rossi.
The Fast Nine Shootout very nearly didn’t happen after rain hit the track on the second day of qualifying, meaning the majority of the practice sessions due to take place that day were cancelled. This meant that Fernando Alonso, in his hastily modified McLaren, didn’t have time to set up his car properly, something which would come back to bite him in the Last Row Shootout.
Credit: Walter Kuhn/IndyCar
Six drivers vied for the last three places on the grid with one-off entrant Sage Karam taking 31st followed by James Hinchcliffe, who managed to avoid a non-start for what would’ve been the second year running, and the miracle that was Kyle Kaiser for Juncos, in a car that shouldn’t have really been in qualifying in the first place after his shunt on Friday.
The three drivers bumped out of the race were Alonso, after McLaren’s widely-reported catalogue of errors stretching back to the very first test, and the Carlin pair of Patricio O’Ward and Max Chilton. After Alonso’s crash on Wednesday, he had also been running a Carlin-built car, meaning the British team lost three of their four entries on Bump Day.
While Alonso garnered much of the attention from qualifying for failing to do just that, it’s important not to forget the 33 drivers who did qualify for the race. Positions 10 to 30 were locked in after Saturday’s running with that group including pretty much all the big hitters who failed to make the Fast Nine, as well as a delighted Pippa Mann who, like Hinchcliffe, failed to qualify last year.
Pippa Mann celebrates qualifying for the race with her #39 team. Credit: James Black/IndyCar
Throughout both practice and qualifying there have been a number of big accidents but, thanks to safety innovations including cut-outs in the floors of the cars, there haven’t been any flips and all the drivers involved walked away unharmed. Alonso, Felix Rosenqvist, O’Ward, Kaiser and Hinchcliffe all suffered shunts, with Alonso and O’Ward making up two of the three bumped drivers.
As for the race, well we can expect to see a close-run fight for the victory with a number of notable drivers out of place on the grid. Generally speaking, the Fast Nine drivers stand the best chance of drinking the milk at the end of the race, but purely being in the race gives any driver a good enough shot at the win.
Pole-sitter Pagenaud will obviously be one to watch, as will second-place Carpenter who is always fast at the 500 and has come close to taking victory a number of times before. Last year’s Indy 500 champion Power will be a threat from sixth as he tries to defend his title. 2016 Indy 500 champion Rossi is another driver who will be chasing the win with his daring overtakes always grabbing the headlines.
Further down the grid, three-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves could be someone to keep an eye out for after his race was ended abruptly last year, as will defending series champion Scott Dixon who is always one to factor into the race. There aren’t many drivers who you can rule out with any certainty, and that’s testament to how close the field is this year.
Scott Dixon with Robert Wickens. Credit: Joe Skibinski/IndyCar
There is a threat of rain on Sunday so it’s probably best we brief you on the protocol if bad weather does affect the race. 101 of the 200 laps must be completed for the race to be classed as ‘official’ and for full points to be dished out; if this can’t happen on Sunday, as scheduled, the race can be postponed until Monday or later, depending on when the weather allows the race to be run. The current forecasts give around a 50% chance of rain during the race, so it’s certainly something to watch out for.
All being well weather-wise, the race will kick off at 12:30 pm local time which works out at 5:30 pm in the UK, so neatly fitting in after the Monaco GP.
Carlin’s Lucas Petersson took a lights to flag victory in an eventful Race Two on Sunday morning.
Petersson led home Benjamin Pedersen by three-seconds ahead of the impressive Neil Verhagen, who made up eight places from 11th on the grid to finish third in a race where overtaking means more points.
Verhagen led home fellow American Kaylen Frederick, with Nadim Azman a strong fifth in the midst of stiff competition around him.
Clement Novalak was sixth after starting 15th in the fully reversed grid ahead of another strong performance from Hampus Ericsson, with Johnathan Hoggard eighth after his last-place start.
Manuel Maldonado and Pavan Ravishankar completed the top ten, with Ayrton Simmons 11th after two offs and Kiern Jewiss losing his front wing attempting to pass Azman to fall to 13th.
Kris Wright dropped from second on the grid to 12th, while Sassakorn Chaimongkol and Ulysse De Pauw came to blows and ended up with damage and Josh Mason retiring after bouncing off the wall following a spin.
Petersson made the most of starting among slower drivers and quickly scampered off into the distance as Wright in particular proved a useful road block until he allowed fellow American Pedersen through midway around the first lap.
Verhagen got a lot of his work done early on to be third by the time the Safety Car was deployed, having disposed of Wright at the end of the first lap.
Mason found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as he tried to tuck back in after a stream of cars had passed him down the inside, making contact with Nadim Azman and skating towards the barrier.
Once the Safety Car period was done, Petersson was able to hold off Pedersen, while Novalak, Ericsson and Hoggard carefully picked their way through some backmarkers with minimal fuss or bother.
Fortec’s Johnathan Hoggard took his first BRDC British F3 victory of 2019 after passing Carlin’s Clement Novalak midway through the race.
British F4 champion Kiern Jewiss was third ahead of Hampus Ericsson and Ayrton Simmons, the latter applying all sorts of pressure to the Swedish driver in hsi first full British F3 season.
Neil Verhagen and Kaylen Frederick were sixth and seventh as the United States of America got a thorough representation in the top ten on Saturday afternoon.
Manuel Maldonado was eighth to return to some kind of form after a poor Oulton Park weekend.
Sassakorn Chaimongkol was ninth ahead of Benjamin Pedersen to complete the top ten.
Ulysse De Pauw and Pavan Ravishankar were 11th and 12th as both endured a difficult start to the weekend in Norfolk, Nadim Azman clear of Josh Mason and Kris Wright in 13th, 14th and 15th.
Lucas Petersson hit strife on lap one and couldn’t recover to finish 16th and last.
Novalak had started on pole position from Hoggard in a tight morning qualifying session and a fast start saw him retain the lead ahead of one of British F4’s leading lights from 2018.
Hoggard eventually passed Novalak on lap five after the Carlin man ran wide at the Wilson’s hairpin, and he quickly pulled away.
Hoggard eventually built a gap of 3s that would not be
Novalak, despite setting the fastest lap in qualifying, hadn’t been happy with the balance and was pleased to take away second place from a race in which he felt there was more to come.
Hoggard will take the positives knowing that he has a four-place head-start on his early championship rival in Race Three, with the reverse-grid Race Two promising action on Sunday morning.
From the moment Claire Williams confessed there were problems on the horizon for their new challenger, FW42, it was evident to me, and to the F1 community, that things weren’t getting any better for her team. And, lo and behold, those fears were set in stone on Barcelona’s first testing day, when every team but the 9-time Constructors’ champions were ready to go. Once they did arrive, they came to realise they’d made another step back – they were over a second off the next slowest car.
Claire Williams (GBR) Williams Racing Deputy Team Principal. Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Thursday 25th April 2019. Baku City Circuit, Azerbaijan.
So, naturally, this has got the wheels whirring in motion once again, that of the fans and media taking turns pummelling the back markers proverbial pinata with their stinging words, memes and hot takes. ‘The worst team I’ve ever seen’ has even been doing the social media rounds. The three races they’ve competed in have done scant good for fanning the flames, but I’m here to tell a little story that might just put things into perspective – the tale of Andrea Moda, F1’s true joke team.It’s September 1991, and F1 outfit Coloni are going through the wars. A Subaru engine supply scolded the team, and they switched back to customer Ford units for 1991. It did them no good, and the team consisting of just six people and even had Portuguese rookie Pedro Chaves walk out on them. They needed a buy-out to get back on their feet and grow into a respectable F1 outfit – and their prayers appeared to have been answered, when Italian shoe designer Andrea Sassetti threw his finances into the project.
And from the off, the whole saga was a Herculean disaster. The signs, believe it or not, were initially promising – planning to field two drivers instead of the one they were limited to in ‘91, both Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia would be enjoying the fruits of what was intended to be BMW’s labour back in 1990, utilising that car design and coupling it with a Judd V8 powertrain. But when the team arrived in South Africa for the season opener, they had to make do with a modified Coloni chassis from the last year, with their new (old?) design still not ready.
Not that they’d even race it. The FIA weren’t impressed with the team’s refusal to pay a $100,000 sum required of new teams, something Sassetti disputed as Andrea Moda were bought rather than created. They were excluded from racing in Kyalami, and by the time they caved to the FIA’s demands for the next race in Mexico, they were still preparing the new cars and both their drivers were out of the door for publicly airing their annoyance at the lack of preparation going on.
For the third race, surprisingly experienced coup Roberto Moreno and newcomer Perry McCarthy would turn up to Brazil, looking to drive the team forward. Perry wouldn’t get the chance, being denied a Super Licence to race around Interlagos, and the staggering lack of pace the car offered would deny Moreno a path out of pre-qualifying.
Their former fired driver Bertaggia came back to the attention of Sassetti with significant funding, but as the team had already made their two designated driver changes he was prevented from reversing his decision. The sheer ineptitude of Sassetti’s grasp on rulebooks led him to resent McCarthy from then on in, blaming him for failures and blatantly disadvantaging him for the benefit of Moreno.
It took until Monaco for things to get better – and even then, it was only by their and Coloni’s lowly standards and not those of a standard F1 team. Moreno managed to get through pre-qualifying, due to attrition in the session more than anything else, but his skill did keep his qualifying time within the threshold needed and actually pipped Eric Van de Pole to 26th and second last on the grid.
This was celebrated like a victory by the team, which given in its former guises the last time they did this was 1989 was at least slightly understandable. It only took 11 laps for Moreno to retire from the race, but participating at all was at least something to build on.
Build on it they did not. Out of the paddock, Sassetti’s unprofessionalism was laid bare when his Italian nightclub was burned down to the ground by an attempted killer, who then attempted to shoot him dead. Yeah, that really happened. Andrea Moda were taking bullets left right and centre on the track too, if they were ever to go out on it. They withdrew from the next race in Canada due to their Judd engines not being there – the cars were present, yet the unit that makes them go was not. Only Brabham lending an engine allowed Moreno to take part in another fruitless pre-quali. And it still got much, much worse.
French truck drivers protesting prevented the parts needed at Magny Cours arriving, so once again they couldn’t run. Sponsors eventually got to the end of their tether and jumped, Sassetti was having to cut costs more and more, and eventually things spiralled into the dangerous. Only one car’s worth of parts were ready for Britain, but Andrea Moda would swap parts between the machines in a quick rush, hoping both drivers could set their times without farce. Speaking of farce, even that word isn’t strong enough for a team sending their driver, McCarthy in this case, out on wet tyres on a dry circuit.
Before long, the team was rightfully barred from taking part in the World Championship. Constant no-shows, not one clean-ran race, and the constant unprofessionalism and anarchy of Sassetti left the FIA with no choice to bar the outfit, and given Andrea Moda were found to be putting a damaged steering system in McCarthy’s car, it was best they weren’t able to race. The final nail in the coffin for the team? Sassetti’s arrest in Belgium over forging invoices. As bad as Claire and the Williams gang have been over the last eighteen months, they have a long way to go before they match the biggest joke team of F1.
HHC Motorsport made a dream start to life with McLaren by winning their first race as a partnership courtesy of Dean MacDonald and Callum Pointon.
The duo were a feature at the front for the entire race having managed to split the leading Multimatic Racing Ford Mustangs of Jade Buford and Scott Maxwell, the Mustangs having been dominant on Saturday during qualifying.
Maxwell and teammate Seb Priaulx would go on to have dramas that would drop the fast Ford back through the order during the second stint as Maxwell went through the gravel after contact and Priaulx spun into the wall while on a comeback trail.
Buford and Chad McCumbee also dropped back as Mustang dominance on Saturday gave way to all-conquering McLarens in Race One on Monday morning.
The Tolman McLaren of James Dorlin and Lewis Smith took second place after an eventful run that included contact with the sister car of Jordan Collard. Collard and Lewis Proctor would retire from second on the penultimate lap after catching fire while challenging for the lead.
The second HHC McLaren of Luke Williams and Tom Jackson was third ahead of McCumbee and Butford, while Josh Price and Patrick Kibble of TF Sport were the highest placed Aston Martin in fifth position.
Matt George and Steve McCulley were the Pro/Am category winners in the Invictus Racing Jaguar ahead of Martin Plowman and Kelvin Fletcher, the former passing Plowman’s Beechdean Aston Martin late on to steal victory in class.
Rick Parfitt Junior and Seb Morris took a popular victory in the opening round of the season after an eventful start to the race on JRM’s British GT debut.
Phil Keen and Adam Balon were second as the lead two cars were in a class of their own, before Bradley Ellis and Ollie Wilkinson held off Jonny Cocker and Sam De Haan.
The two Century Motorsport BMWs driven Ben Green/Dominic Paul and Jack Mitchell/Adrian Willmott were next ahead of Jonny Adam/Graham Davidson and Adam Christodoulou/Richard Neary.
Rounding out the GT3 finishers were Marco Sorensen/Andrew Howard and Nicki Thiim/Mark Farmer, the latter spinning early on and unable to make inroads thereafter.
Drama found the British GT series as early as the second lap when Ryan Ratcliffe’s optimistic move on polesitter Iain Loggie had predictable consequences, the Scotsman spun around and both drivers left out of the race after just two minutes.
A lengthy clean up operation saw the Safety Car out for over ten minutes, and Parfitt was able to capitalise on his inherited lead having passed Sam De Haan at the start.
Parfitt was able to pull out a lead of over four seconds over De Haan, who had the attentions of both Century Motorsport BMWs of Paul and Willmott to contend with for much of the opening stint.
While almost all of the GT3 competitors pitted as soon as possible, Parfitt allowed an extra lap to avoid traffic in a tight Oulton Park pit lane. De Haan found out to his cost how tight the pit lane can be, as he lost several positions when handing over to teammate Cocker.
Cocker would pressurise the Aston Martin of Bradley Ellis for the duration of their second stint for third place to little avail at a narrow and twisty Oulton Park, with third place through to ninth covered by five seconds.
With live coverage finally in our neck of the woods, available on YouTube rather than a suspect stream, there’s every reason to be watching Super Formula this season. And if today’s first round at Suzuka, one of the all-time great Grand Prix circuits, was anything to go by, with Nick Cassidy storming through the field to win and attrition aplenty, it’ll be worth getting into.
The race started with Tadasuke Makino, formerly of F2, cementing his lead ahead of the battling Alex Palou. The opening laps remained fairly static, with few successful moves until Lap 7, when Cassidy, who qualified 12th, pitted for soft tyres. This would turn out to be a masterstroke, as only a few laps later, both 18 year old debutant Tristan Charpentier and stalwart Ryo Hirakawa went off at 130R and into the barriers, bringing out the first safety car.
This was where the madness kicked in. Palou, who had been straining to get past Makino at the start, was slapped with a drive-through penalty and served it just before the Safety Car was deployed, but the field bunching up did alleviate some of the damage. Dan Ticktum was slow to get into his pit box due to his Mugen team double-stacking, and a mechanic even acrobatically jumped over Cassidy’s car to change the wheels as quickly as possible.
The famous Super Formula pitstop…watch the front tyre changer closely.
Yuhi Sekiguchi’s car appeared to momentarily stop in the pitlane before he was able to get it going, but a lap later he pulled back into the pits and became the third of what would turn out to be a long list of retirees. Meanwhile, Cassidy was on the charge, his perfectly-timed pitstop jumping him up into 5th before he dispatched first Makino then Yuji Kunimoto to place himself 3rd. Shortly after, the safety car was out again: Kazuki Nakajima beached his TOM’S Toyota into the Degner 1 gravel, with a distracted Harrison Newey then following him into retirement at Degner 2.
Five retirements within 15 laps just signals the frantic drama Super Formula is good for, and a second safety car three laps later when Hiroaki Ishiura pulled into the pits and Palou’s machine gave up on him only furthered that point. From then on, Cassidy was into a prime position to win a race which looked for all the world yesterday evening to be an exercise in damage limitation. Kamui Kobayashi, the on-track leader, would have to pit again to use a different compound.
A third safety car was brought out this time by Makino, who’s car suffered a right-rear wheel nut failure and sent him into the gravel beside the run up to 130R. Makino would prove, finally, to be the last of the retirements, but there were still twists and turns up the road with Kobayashi trying to find the perfect slot to pit in, Cassidy managing to keep within arms’ reach, and the others jostling for podium/lower positions. Ticktum began to fall down the field, his airbox lighting glowing red (this signals a lack of attack mode – versus green for full, and blue for halfway used) and tyres appearing to be spent.
The final laps proved to be the killer for Kobayashi’s hopes of a strong finish. The late Safety Cars prevented the ex-Sauber F1 driver from banking a good result on a happy hunting ground for him, finishing tenth. Cassidy took the on-track lead on the final lap, and Kenta Yamashita was kept at bay in the end by Naoki Yamamoto, last season’s title winner. Cassidy lost that title by a point, but already, he’s taken first blood and cemented a troubling marker for his rivals.
image courtesy of Ferrari F1 Team – Photogallery – Bahrain Grand Prix 2019
Sebastian Vettel topped the FP2 timesheets under the Bahrain lights, leading his Scuderia teammate Charles Leclerc by less than a tenth of a second. Mercedes found themselves six tenths away, while Renault impressed, Red Bull held back and Williams showed signs of improvement.
After the smokescreen of disappointment Ferrari waded through in Melbourne, the evening rays of Bahrain gave light to a much better scenario for them – almost a second separated them from the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas, the man who had his hands on the trophy they so expected to collect.
They topped the initial runs during FP1, with the new boy Charles Leclerc leading his established teammate Sebastian Vettel by +0.407. The Toro Rosso duo of Daniil Kvyat, development driver for the Scuderia a year ago, and Alexander Albon were able to show their pace, giving hope a similar result to Pierre Gasly’s miracle 4th place last year may not be so far away.
Kimi Raikkonen was the first of a handful of drivers to be caught out at Turn 2 on cold tyres, losing grip and entering the dreaded pirouette while trying to plant the power needed for the straight ahead. When he was able to get in a lap, Kimi found himself only three tenths away from the ‘best of the rest’ before steadily dropping down the times as the other midfield teams got up to speed.
Pierre Gasly’s nightmare Australian GP weekend is behind him, but FP2 suggested he still has a way to go before the RB15 package is dialled up to his liking. He was 7 tenths away from Max Verstappen, who found himself bested by the Renault. Red Bull’s pace could prove to be misleading come Saturday but there is certainly still work to do.
Renault put out a real warning to the other teams challenging for 4th, challenging Haas with impressive single timed laps and longer runs. Nico Hulkenberg found himself leading Daniel Ricciardo by 1.2 seconds for most of the session, getting within two tenths of Bottas and further demonstrating the ever-shortening gap between the top teams and challengers in F1 2019.
The Williams, while still slowest, did look to have made improvements compared to their sobering experience in Albert Park, George Russell able to get within just a tenth of Giovinazzi on a 1:31:904. Robert Kubica continued to lag behind his teammate, to the tune of a second, but was not using DRS during his laps for an unknown reason.
Vettel would go on to get ahead of his Monegasque teammate, before following his old teammate Raikkonen’s lead in spinning at Turn 2, overloading the rear tyres but able to continue. Ferrari’s ominous Friday pace serves as a stark warning to the Mercedes team, and Toto Wolff’s nervousness about their predicament, so often mocked by the paddock and fans, could well prove to be genuine.
Formula One is back with a bang, and Albert Park’s two days of running have culminated in a scattergun grid, topped by Lewis Hamilton.image courtesy of Pirelli Motorsports.
The five time World Champion picked up his stellar form from 2018’s end, landing his sixth consecutive pole in Melbourne and, surprisingly, scorching the tipped favourites Ferrari on one lap pace.
The session started with a twist – 1st to 18th were separated by just a second, and when Red Bull newbie Pierre Gasly didn’t show in the final minutes, he surfed down the order to 17th.
Lance Stroll joined him in the Q1 dropzone, as did an unlucky Carlos Sainz, who found his final sector to be compromised by a limping Robert Kubica who had moments ago brushed the wall and picked up a puncture. Kubica and his teammate George Russell endured a nightmare, their Williams over a second away from the nearest car.
Q2 saw many new, and returning, faces still in the hunt. Daniil Kvyat’s impressive return to the frontline ultimately earned him 15th place, while his teammate Alexander Albon placed his Toro Rosso a more than respectable 13th on his first qualifying outing.
The home boy, Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo, didn’t have the session he had hoped for: general consensus was that the Renault is the 4th quickest package, but neither he nor Nico Hulkenberg were able to extract it and line up 11th and 12th, the German getting first blood.
The two extremes of the F1 grid, 19 year old Lando Norris and 39 year old Kimi Raikkonen both stole the show in the midfield, to earn a McLaren and Sauber representation in Q3.
Norris ended the final session in eighth place, marking an admirable U-turn from the dismal form McLaren had the season prior, while Raikkonen achieved a solid 9th. Sergio Perez brought up the rear, while once again the Haas package looks strong around Albert Park, with Romain Grosjean 6th and Kevin Magnussen 7th.
But it was Hamilton who ultimately stole the show – while Valtteri Bottas had the initial time to beat, he came back with a splendid lap on the edge that showed while the Mercedes might be a nervy car to drive, the pace is there in abundance.
Bottas lines up second on the grid, with Sebastian Vettel behind in 3rd and an opportunistic Max Verstappen completing the second row, ahead of Charles Leclerc.
