Oscar Piastri <\/a>admits teams and drivers \u201cdon\u2019t really know how tough\u201d qualifying is going to be to manage.<\/p>\nBecause of the deployment demands, Piastri explained that drivers are \u201claunching our laps halfway down the pit straight\u201d, which then makes it harder to judge the closing speeds of any cars ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAt the moment, we don\u2019t really know how tough. Trying to do practice sessions at the moment is really difficult if you are off sequence with people.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of us are launching our laps halfway down the pit straight, so trying to judge the car behind is very, very tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, there are pretty major quirks that we are going to have to get used to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be an interesting weekend still to go. Everyone is probably going to find a lot overnight, just with getting things in the place you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/xpb_1398190_hires.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen, Australian GP, FP1, Red Bull<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0XPB Images<\/p>\n
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Teams must control their own destinies in qualifying<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s running at Albert Park saw a lot of drivers locking up and running off track, particularly at Turn 3.<\/p>\n
Red Bull\u2019s Isack Hadjar says the constantly shifting balance of the cars because of the deployment and harvesting is changing braking zones lap to lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also constantly you have to adapt your braking points, because you are never arriving at the same speed, the dynamic of the car changes as well. So, it\u2019s very tricky,\u201d he said when asked by Crash.net about the driving style required.<\/p>\n
As such, qualifying is likely to be heavily disrupted by yellow flags and stoppages, but second-guessing these is something that isn\u2019t going to prove successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a bit chaotic,\u201d Red Bull\u2019s Paul Monaghan said in response to a question from Crash.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s five and a bit ks around this place, we\u2019ve got to distribute 22 cars around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust got to get through Q1, which is no easy task.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be plenty of people trying to push us out, so we\u2019ve got to do a couple of decent laps, one per driver at least, and then we\u2019re through.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen it gets a little bit easier. But it\u2019s [a case of] taking on the responsibility ourselves. We can\u2019t wait to see what others do: control your own destiny, that\u2019s the best way to answer that question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The energy harvesting and deployment of Formula 1\u2019s new power units is threatening to make qualifying at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[14203,64,63,10114,806,805,803,804,918,2072,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-523654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-alex-albon","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-isack-hadjar","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-red-bull","17":"tag-sergio-perez","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523654","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=523654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}