Lance Stroll frustrated by Lewis Hamilton six minutes into Australian Grand Prix practice

Formula One preview: A lap of the Australian Grand Prix

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Lance Stroll moaned on his team radio about Lewis Hamilton’s track position just minutes into the first practice session for the Australian Grand Prix. The Aston Martin driver was heading towards the new widened turn 11 when he saw Hamilton on a slow lap.

Immediately, the Canadian claimed Hamilton had blocked him on track to his race engineer. He said: “Hamilton impeded me. He’s totally impeding me.”

His engineer replied: “Yeah, copy we saw.” Sky Sports F1 pundit Karun Chandhok was shocked by the comments as he heard them back.

He said: “That’s six minutes into the weekend. That’s quite punchy for this early in the weekend. Elbows out.”

Carlos Sainz topped the first practice session from his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc. However, the Ferrari’s appeared to be experiencing some porpoising issues down the back straight which could be of concern heading into the weekend.

The Red Bull pair of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen were next but were still half a second adrift. McLaren has had a surprising uptick of pace with Lando Norris just a few tenths behind in fifth.

However, it was another session of concern for Mercedes with Hamilton only quick enough for seventh. Team-mate George Russell also struggled with a lap only good enough for 12th in the first session.

Stroll finished 16th, two-tenths slower than his returning team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

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Mercedes were expected to bring a new aero upgrade to Melbourne this weekend in a bid to solve some of their issues but that has not been the case. Instead, it was Red Bull that brought a slightly new rear wing in their bid to close the gap to the teams in front.

Russell warned on Friday that the Silver Arrows were not expecting an immediate fix to their issues for this weekend. He explained there was “nothing substantial this weekend” which will immediately close the gap to the leaders.

The former Williams driver added: “It’s going to take time and I think we just have to be disciplined and patient – because we are so far behind and because of the cost cap, we can’t afford just to throw things at it and ‘trial and error’ at race weekends. We need to trust the process and bring the upgrades when we have total faith and confidence they will do as we expect.

“And that will be a number of races before we start seeing that.”

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