Practice One: First round to McLaren

With Jenson Button heading Lewis Hamilton at the top of the timesheets, McLaren claimed a 1-2 in Practice One for the Australian GP.

Strong start for Hamilton and Button as Red Bull stay quiet

With Jenson Button heading Lewis Hamilton at the top of the timesheets, McLaren made the best possible start to the 2012 season by claiming a 1-2 in Practice One for the Australian GP. After a frustratingly slow start, with overnight rain persuading the majority of teams to stay in their garages whilst the Albert Park circuit dried out, the McLaren duo finally turned up the heat after failing to turn in a single lap time during the opening hour. Yet perhaps the biggest story of the session - beyond the rain and the live debut of Sky Sports F1 HD - was the ongoing woe of Ferrari, with Felipe Massa dumping his F2012 in the gravel and Fernando Alonso's all-too-apparent struggle to keep his car on track. Alonso ended the session fourth fastest while Massa ended the 90 minutes down in 18th after losing control of his car at Turn 9. The Mercedes, complete with their 'passive DRS system', showed up well, with both Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg claiming P1 in the final ten minutes of the session before the McLarens finally showed a little of their hand. But, as was usually the case last season, Red Bull opted not to show any of theirs, with Mark Webber fifth fastest and World Champion Sebastian Vettel down in 11th.

Overcast

With the overcast conditions yielding rain just before the session started, the first 45 minutes were devoted to the use of Pirelli's intermediate and full wet tyres. As such, lap times were a good 10 seconds down on those eventually seen but once Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi ventured out on medium compound slicks and went several seconds quicker, cars took to the track en masse. There were still some absentees: the HRT of Pedro de la Rosa never made it out of the garage in the first place as the team struggle to complete a second chassis while team-mate Narain Karthikeyan completed just three laps before his car crawled to a halt on track with an engine failure. Kimi Raikkonen was also in his garage for most of the session after Lotus were required to make steering changes on the E20 to suit the former World Champion, who still managed to end the session ninth fastest. Practice One Times:
1) Button 1:27.560s 11 laps
2) Hamilton 1:27.805 14
3) Schumacher 1:28.235 17
4) Alonso 1:28.360 21
5) Webber 1:28.467 21
6) Rosberg 1:28.643 22
7) Ricciardo 1:28.908 23
8) Maldonado 1:29.415 16
9) Raikkonen 1:29.565 8
10) Kobayashi 1:29.722 26
11) Vettel 1:29.790 21
12) Hulkenberg 1:29.865 17
13) Di Resta 1:29.881 18
14) Senna 1:29.953 21
15) Perez 1:30.124 22
16) Grosjean 1:30.515 16
17) Kovalainen 1:30.586 16
18) Massa 1:30.743 11
19) Vergne 1:31.178 17
20) Petrov 1:31.983 8
21) Glock 1:34.730 8
22) Pic 1:40.256
23) Karthikeyan No time 3
24) De la Rosa No time 0