Today, Sebastian and Ferrari were well-deserved winners. From the early stages of the race, it was clear that Sebastian was very quick because Lewis wasn’ t able to pull away.
There was a familiar look to the top of the timesheet as the 2017 F1 season burst into life in Australia on Friday afternoon, with Lewis Hamilton leading new team mate Valtteri Bottas in a Mercedes one-two.
The eve of the 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix - the last point of the year at which in theory anything could happen. From tomorrow, not only will we begin to see the real impact made by the wide-ranging regulation changes, but patterns will start to emerge which will illustrate the pecking order at this first race, and the likely form in the next two or three, before the European season at Barcelona in May heralds further major car upgrades....
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport completed 135 laps – just over 628km - of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Tuesday, as 2017 pre-season testing continued in Spain with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas taking turns at the wheel of the F1 W08 EQ Power+
Using soft compound tyres, Raikkonen set a best time of 1m20.960s just over an hour into Tuesday afternoon's running – narrowly bettering Hamilton's session-topping morning effort of 1m20.983s, which was set using supersofts.
Hamilton's effort was still good enough to finish the day second overall, with Valtteri Bottas taking over driving duties for Mercedes for the afternoon.
2017 challenger christened W08 EQ Power+, launched exclusively online to fans in innovative 360 degree live broadcast during 100 km Filming Day in Silverstone, UK.
Wehrlein will be joining the Sauber F1 team for the 2017 race season letting us understand that Bottas will be the favor for taking Nico Rosberg's place.
It’s great to be back in Europe and to be back in Spain. It was a good start for us today with two good practice sessions. Times were looking good on the longer and also on the shorter stints. I feel very comfortable with the car with some new parts added and they seemed to have worked well.