Lando Norris Tops Final Australian Grand Prix Practice Session

McLaren F1 Team driver, Lando Norris, topped the timing sheets in Free Practice Three for the 2022 Australian Grand Prix, after a promising session for the papaya-coloured team. Meanwhile, Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team found themselves scratching their heads at two damaged cars when both drivers found themselves in the barriers.

Sebastian Vettel, who is competing in his first weekend of the 2022 season after missing rounds one and two due to COVID-19, lost control of the car at the exit of the turn ten, gliding through the gravel and into the wall, damaging the left-hand side of the car. Lance Stroll also hit the wall after locking his inside tyre at turn eleven, and damaging his front-left tyre on the exit barrier of the corner. Thankfully both drivers were okay, but unfortunately finished at the bottom of the timing table.

Norris would soon finish the session in first place, while team-mate Daniel Ricciardo would put his number three McLaren in sixth place – a much more promising result for the Woking-based team that has been struggling in the opening rounds of the season.

Charles Leclerc would follow behind Norris in second place, with just under one-and-a-half tenths separating the first and second place finishers. Fellow Scuderia Ferrari driver, Carlos Sainz Jr., would finish the final practice session in fifth place.

Oracle Red Bull Racing driver, Sergio Pérez would round out the top three in the final practice session, while reigning world champion, Max Verstappen, ended the final programme down in seventh place after struggling to find the balance and spinning his car at the penultimate corner.

Fernando Alonso had another promising session for BWT Alpine F1 Team, putting his car in fourth place while running the helmet camera for the first Australian Grand Prix in three years. Teammate, Esteban Ocon set a time almost a second slower than that of his double world championship-winning team-mate, putting his car in thirteenth place.

Final practice was a mild improvement for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, which saw Lewis Hamilton put his W13 in eighth place, while his fellow British driver, George Russell, would conclude the session in eleventh.

Valtteri Bottas put his Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN car in the top ten, once again, finishing in ninth place; while Zhou Guanyu would set a time good enough for fifteenth place. Meanwhile, Scuderia AlphaTauri would hover around the top ten, with a tenth place lap time for Yuki Tsunoda and a twelfth-place time for Pierre Gasly.

It was not an ideal session for Haas F1 Team, with Mick Schumacher setting a time around a second off the pace in fourteenth, and Kevin Magnussen almost two seconds off the pace in seventeenth. Alexander Albon and Nicolas Latifi would put their Williams F1 Team cars in sixteenth and eighteenth places respectively, after completing a total of thirty laps in the session

Albert Park Free Practice Three Result