Join now and get your first month for just $1 ><\/a><\/p>\nHis performance came after attributing much of his improved form this year to the role of his 52-year-old Italian race engineer Carlo Santi, who succeeded Riccardo Adami, and other changes made for his second season at Ferrari.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like Carlo is like my Italian \u2018Bono\u2019,\u201d said Hamilton referring to the Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington who now works with championship leader Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told Bono that the other day. He\u2019s a bit of an OG! He\u2019s an older guy that\u2019s been around the block. He\u2019s very calm. You can hear him on the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain. Photo by Manuel Eletto\/Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Four-time champion Max Verstappen was third fastest for Red Bull, 0.168 adrift, ahead of the Mercedes of George Russell and championship-leading Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli, three-tenths and five-tenths off the pace.<\/p>\n
Hamilton will also seek an eighth Monaco podium on Sunday to draw level with Ayrton Senna\u2019s record of eight.<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar recovered from a crash during opening practice to finish sixth in the second Red Bull ahead of Oscar Piastri of McLaren.<\/p>\n
The two Audis of Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto were eighth and ninth ahead Olver Bearman of Haas while it was another dismal day for Aston Martin with two-time champion Fernando Alonso 20th and Lance Stroll 22nd.<\/p>\n
The session began with Hadjar\u2019s car still up on axle stands, as Russell led the way, under a blue sky with a mild 22 degrees Celsius. Verstappen set an early time before the Ferraris took over with Leclerc in front by a whisker ahead of Hamilton until Verstappen took over.<\/p>\n
Everyone, bar the Aston Martins on softs, ran on mediums as the track ramped up, providing more grip and faster lap times as Hamilton proved by going top in 1:13.729, 0.279 clear of Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Hadjar joined the fray after 14 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, guys,\u201d he said as he pulled out shortly before a Virtual Safety Car (VSC) was deployed briefly when Norris pulled up at the Nouvelle Chicane with a battery-related electrical failure.<\/p>\n
On resumption, Leclerc regained control, edging Hamilton by 0.058 seconds in 1:13.613 before Verstappen took softs and clocked 1:13.467. Both Mercedes men also took softs, too, but were unable to catch the top trio until Russell rose to second.<\/p>\n
Ferrari finally took to softs with 26 minutes to go, Leclerc soon clocking 1:13.137 to take command by 0.057 before Hamilton, clearly in the mood, trimmed that in 1:13.026.<\/p>\n
In the final minutes, Sergio Perez came to a halt in Casino Square in his Cadillac, the American marque racing in Europe for the first time, with smoke filling his cockpit from the front-right brake ducts.<\/p>\n
Twenty-four hours after celebrating their landmark 1000th Formula One race entry with an array of champion drivers and cars, defending team champions McLaren hit a bump in Friday\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n
World champion Lando Norris and teammate Piastri finished the opening day in 19th and seventh places respectively, the Briton suffering an electrical failure that stopped him on track and the Australian complaining of lack of grip.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit of a difficult day,\u201d said Piastri.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just one place where we\u2019re struggling \u2013 it\u2019s a little bit everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s chief technical officer Rob Marshall said Norris\u2019 car had shut down completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s electrical.\u201d<\/p>\n
The setback is a becoming a familiar issue in the new hybrid era of Formula 1 with its controversial and unpopular 50-50 split in power provision between engine and battery \u2013 a feature of modern racing that did not concern the team in its earlier successes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton rolled back the years on Friday when he outpaced Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-717887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717887","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=717887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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