Wet Australian GP Practice Sessions Limit Conclusions About Relative Performance

The 2016 Formula One season started off with a splash—literally—on Friday in Melbourne, Australia. Rain throughout both free practice sessions severely limited the amount of running by all teams, building the suspense for qualifying on Saturday.

After weeks of cautioning that we couldn't really tell much about the running order from pre-season testing, everyone was hoping Friday practice would start to answer some questions. The wet weather put paid to most of those hopes.

Any Ferrari fans (or just fans pining for a championship not decided by the summer break) hoping to see the Italian team close the gap to Mercedes at the front of the grid will be discouraged by the practice times we did see, though.

Clive Mason/Getty Images

On a drying track in the first session, Lewis Hamilton managed a time of one minute, 29.725 seconds, the only sub-1:30 lap of the day. Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat was the only driver within one second of Hamilton's best time, at 1:30.146.

By comparison, Mercedes' Nico Rosberg set the fastest time a year ago in the first free practice session at 1:29.557 in dry conditions.

Despite the limited running, Hamilton seemed pleased with his performance. Afterward, per a team press release, he said:

"

That was a good day. The car performed well and although we didn’t get a huge number of laps in, they were still quite constructive sessions. I was lucky to get a couple of dry laps to get a tiny feeling for what the balance is like around here, which was down to some good work from the team to time my runs right. 

"

Neither Ferrari driver set a competitive time in FP1, and McLaren's Jenson Button managed the most laps, with just 16. Twelve drivers, including Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, completed fewer than 10 laps in the early session.

The weather for the second practice session was even worse, with everyone remaining on intermediate tyres for the duration. Although Hamilton and Rosberg combined for just 10 laps, the defending champion once again put in the quickest time of the session, a relatively glacial 1:38.841.

Again, that was nearly half-a-second ahead of his nearest rival, Nico Hulkenberg in the Force India. Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was third, 0.645 seconds off Hamilton's best time.

Rosberg, meanwhile, ended his day on the side of the track after planting his car's nose in the barrier on an early run. As the circuit never dried enough for slick tyres, though, Rosberg's error should not really affect him for the rest of the weekend. Had there been dry running at the end of the session, he would have had to rely, in part, on data from Hamilton's car for his setup choices, at least for FP3.

"The conditions were OK, on the edge, but they were fine," Rosberg said, according to Autosport's Ian Parkes. "I just accelerated too much, I got it wrong and damaged the car."

McLaren should be encouraged by their Friday results, wet weather or not. Both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso finished in the top 10 in both sessions. Of course, the timing sheets were skewed, for example, by Renault and Williams choosing not to set timed laps in FP2.

Still, racing director Eric Boullier said, per a team press release, "It's been an extremely encouraging day. We know there's work to be done, but today has shown that we’ve made real progress—both in terms of reliability and in terms of performance."

Anything near the top 10 is promising for McLaren, after the team had just six points-scoring finishes in 2015.

The current BBC weather forecast for Melbourne (as of publication time) is showing rain on Saturday morning, but not for Saturday afternoon or Sunday. If those conditions hold, we should get a relatively true picture of the running order during qualifying.

After opting for a conservative program in pre-season testing, focused more on reliability than performance, Mercedes still have not used the supersoft tyres they will run in qualifying (assuming it is dry). Based on what we saw on Friday, though, the Mercs appear to have retained their significant advantage from last year over the rest of the field.

Thanks to the rain, any other guesses about teams' relative performances might not be any more accurate than those that followed testing. On Saturday afternoon, though, once the times start to count, there will be nowhere to hide...rain or not.

All lap times are from the FIA's official timing data.

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