A good starting point
As already shown in the pre-season, the Ferrari even in free practice for the Australian Grand Prix he showed that he had a good car in his hands. There SF-26 it seems to be a decent starting point on which to build a season in which developments will be more fundamental than ever. For Charles Leclerc, Mercedes is the car to beat and only tomorrow in qualifying will we find out whether this will actually be the case and how much the Silver Arrows’ advantage over the competition will be.
Meanwhile, free practice ended with fourth place for Lewis Hamilton and fifth for Charles Leclercto be highlighted positively for the Englishman, who had concluded 2025 in a truly negative manner.
The analysis of Vasseur’s free practice
Speaking at the microphones of Sky Italia, Frederic Vasseur he commented on the two Ferraris on the track in Melbourne on Friday: “Overall it was a good starting pointSurely we still have a lot to learn about this new machine, for example with energy delivery. But it’s the same for other teams. We saw big swings in performance from session to session and even just from lap to lap. This means that we will have to observe the data this evening to try to get back on track even stronger tomorrow. But overall it was have a good day.”
Vasseur then spoke about Hamilton: “What if he seems more in tune? Yes, but that’s pretty normal given that he’s in his second year on the team and has been part of development all winter. I think it’s a lot easier for him than last year“. Finally, a joke about the many unknowns at the beginning of 2026: “We are still in the early stages with this generation of machines and cannot expect to be at the level of last year. We have to keep our minds completely open, learning every day and getting better and better.”
