MERCEDES AMG - PROMISING PACE IN FRIDAY PRACTICE

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport shows promising pace in Friday practice. Lewis finished the first session of the year in P1 with Valtteri in P2. Briton ended the day in P1 with Valtteri in P3. Both drivers used all 3 Pirelli compounds, Soft, SuperSoft, UltraSoft.

Lewis Hamilton: "Coming to the first race, you really have no idea what it’s going to be like. You don’t how you’re going to feel physically, you don’t know how the tyres are going to react to the circuit. But we started on the right foot today, we got through everything we needed. It closed up a little bit in FP2 in terms of the gap between us all, but that’s exciting. It’s more challenging for me to try and eke out a little more from the car."

"It’s been such a nice day, Albert Park is a really beautiful place to be and work when the weather is like this. The tyres definitely didn’t seem to have the same issue that we had in Barcelona where they were blistering, so it felt a lot more normal. Obviously the car is quicker here than it was last year, so it feels better everywhere. Turns 11 and 12 are crazy, we’re not even braking into that corner, it’s insane. It’s going to rain tomorrow and on Sunday as far as I’m aware. I’ve not driven in the rain yet on these tyres, so that’ll be interesting."

Valtteri Bottas: "FP1 was tricky for me, we had a bit of an issue with the suspension and also with the fuel system, so it was difficult to get a good comparison. I don’t think these issues are something to worry about, just something we discovered in the session. In second practice the car felt a lot better but there’s still more to unlock. I have to say thank you to the team because we are looking strong at this point, so I think it’s a good start."

"It’s good to be back on track and go racing. It’s looking really close between us, Ferrari and Red Bull but that was more or less expected. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. We got some information for the long runs if it’s a dry race, we got some tyre data and we can see that a lot of things are behaving differently to testing in Barcelona because it’s much warmer and it’s a different tarmac. We’ve definitely learned a lot and we’ll keep on learning."

James Allison: "It was a good day. We had a programme of finding out how the tyres behaved and we’ve been able to work through that without any drama. It’s brilliant as always after the winter testing to actually be racing again and to be finding out for real where our car stands."

"If we were in any doubt before, we’re in no doubt now that it’s going to be a tight weekend with both Ferrari and Red Bull. But we’re looking forward to the fight tomorrow and again on Sunday."