Oscar Piastri fastest in Australian GP practice as Aston Martin suffer more woe

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri topped the timesheets at the end of the first day of practice for the 2026 season, with Britain’s title favourite George Russell third fastest, just behind Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli.

The pace was a reversal from the first session of the day when all four Mercedes-powered teams – Mercedes, McLaren, Alpine and Williams – struggled for some reason. A sign, perhaps, of just how sensitive and capricious these new power units can be. And how track-specific. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admitted FP1 had been a “difficult, challenging” session.

By the time second practice came around, Mercedes had sorted out their issues from FP1, which apparently concerned the recharging of the battery.  

Piastri’s quickest lap of 1min19.729sec was two tenths quicker than Antonelli’s fastest lap, with Russell a further tenth behind. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, who had gone quickest in FP1, were fourth and fifth fastest, just ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

McLaren’s reigning world champion Lando Norris endured a difficult day. Norris only managed seven laps in FP1 before retiring with a gearbox issue. And he found himself over a second off the pace of his team-mate Piastri in FP2.

At least he is not driving an Aston Martin. One day after team principal Adrian Newey admitted his drivers were worried about the possibility of “permanent nerve damage” in their fingers due to the violence of the vibrations emanating from Aston Martin’s Honda power unit, Fernando Alonso failed to make it out of the garage at all in FP1 while Lance Stroll managed just three laps.

The Aston pair fared slightly better in FP2, managing 18 and 13 laps respectively. But they were still slowest of all the drivers to set a lap, five and six seconds off Piastri’s pace respectively.

Newey admitted in a press conference between sessions that the team had just two “operational batteries” left for the entire weekend – the two in the cars – having brought four with them.