Sebastian Vettel made a near-perfect start to the new Formula One season after describing his opening day of practice in Australia as “seamless”. The reigning world champion was fastest in both Friday sessions and enjoyed throwing the Red Bull RB9 around Albert Park although the threat of rain tomorrow may hinder his chances of a third Melbourne pole position.
“Overall it was a good day for us. It was pretty seamless and there was no trouble with the car. After all the mileage of testing, it was fun to be out there – this circuit doesn’t get easier, it’s a good challenge. The soft tyre doesn’t last too long, but the harder tyre is a decent race tyre. The weather should be quite changeable tomorrow and, as we can’t predict how much that will impact the tyres and car balance, we need to be ready to change things. Today was a good day and the balance was good, but we need to be ready for what’s coming up.”
Teammate Mark Webber was a quarter of a second behind in second place and sent out an ominous message to the rest of the field, pointing out that there was still room for improvement.
“It was not a bad day and we got through plenty of information. It was nice to have a bit of sun on the circuit after Barcelona, where we had pretty overcast conditions. We had to correlate a lot of information from Europe and that went pretty well. We still have a huge amount to go through tonight and we’re expecting a bit of overcast stuff tomorrow, so we need to be ready for that. Overall, it was pretty positive for us, but there are still areas to improve on.”
