{"id":522424,"date":"2026-03-06T11:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522424\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:59:12","slug":"mercedes-admit-theres-still-a-lot-to-do-to-iron-out-teething-troubles-after-australia-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522424\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes admit there\u2019s \u2018still a lot to do\u2019 to iron out \u2018teething troubles\u2019 after Australia practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes\u2019 communications chief has admitted that Kimi Antonelli and George Russell were caught out by some \u201cunexpected\u201d issues on the first day of running for the Australian Grand Prix, but predicted a stronger showing through the rest of the weekend.<\/p>\n

For everyone across the F1 grid, the opening Free Practice sessions of the season were all about adapting to the unique Albert Park Circuit<\/a> and learning how to maximise performance in the brand-new cars, with a few early niggles to iron out.<\/p>\n

Mercedes placed a lacklustre P7 and P8 in FP1<\/a> with Russell<\/a> leading, although his effort was over a second adrift of pacesetter Charles Leclerc. FP2<\/a> was a different story, with both drivers significantly cutting down their times to stake a claim in the top three behind McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n

Bradley Lord<\/a>, Mercedes\u2019 Team Representative and Chief Communications Officer, said: \u201cWe had a bit of a tricky first session \u2013 lots of snagging, lots of teething troubles and things like that.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It was] much smoother in FP2 and we got a decent long run in, and decent single lap work as well. The drivers were much happier with the balance of the car, the deployment, and the energy management. Lots of learning but still a lot to do overnight and into tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expanding on the issues they faced, he added: \u201cSome were unexpected, some caught us out and just little bits that reflect how much work we\u2019ve had to do over the winter, what a big project this has been, and what a massive job it is to have so much change in parallel and to be ready for the first race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not unexpected, albeit caught us out a little bit, but hopefully now in the rearview mirror and we can work overnight and into tomorrow with a bit more confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as anything, it was about doing the learning on this circuit rather than the more familiar territory of Bahrain, understanding how it\u2019s working and then we\u2019ll feed that into the simulations overnight. Hopefully we can get it balanced between the two cars tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lord also admitted that Russell \u2013 who was noted for making contact with Arvid Lindblad in the pit lane \u2013 appeared more comfortable with the long run pace than Antonelli<\/a>, with the Italian ending FP2 ahead of his team mate and just two-tenths off leader Piastri\u2019s fastest lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course there\u2019s still work to do but we made a really good step in FP2,\u201d Antonelli said. \u201cIt\u2019s massive learning every time we go on track, every lap we understand more about the car and the PU, which is tricky at this track.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously I need to focus on tomorrow because the first Qualifying of the year is coming up. It looks like it\u2019s a close fight with the top teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be easy of course \u2013 Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull all look strong. We just need to keep our heads down and keep focusing on ourselves in order to try and improve even further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes\u2019 communications chief has admitted that Kimi Antonelli and George Russell were caught out by some \u201cunexpected\u201d issues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-522424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}