Reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton led the way once more during the second practice session for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Hamilton, having topped first practice, was the only driver to dip into the 1:23s, as Max Verstappen split the Mercedes drivers, while elsewhere Haas impressed, building on its pre-season promise.
Hamilton used the Ultrasoft tyres to record a time of 1:23.931 in warm and sunny conditions at Albert Park, laying down his authority as he goes in quest of a fifth straight pole at the venue.
However, Red Bull displayed promise through Verstappen, who finished 0.127 seconds in arrears, putting him ahead of Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
Bottas had a comparatively messy session, running through the Turn 3 gravel after a close call with Kimi Raikkonen – for which both have been summoned to the stewards – and later going off into the Turn 8 grass.
Raikkonen, meanwhile, was the quickest Ferrari driver, 0.283s behind Hamilton, as team-mate Sebastian Vettel was half a second off the pace in fifth.
Haas, which caught the eye of many during pre-season testing, impressed once more as Romain Grosjean put the VF-18 into sixth place, 0.717 behind Hamilton.
Grosjean’s pace was reinforced by the presence of team-mate Kevin Magnussen in ninth place, the duo sandwiching home representative Daniel Ricciardo and the lead McLaren of Fernando Alonso.
Ricciardo’s potential, though, was masked by the session being suspended while he was on his Ultrasoft lap, the brief stoppage caused by a loose timing wire along the pit straight.
Ricciardo had only lost a tenth of a second to Hamilton across the first two sectors of the lap when his effort had to be called off, and he did not attempt another low-fuel hot lap as attention switched to longer runs when the session resumed.
The impressive Grosjean aside, the midfield group, as expected, was a competitive affair, with a second covering eighth-placed Alonso and Williams rookie Sergey Sirotkin, down in 18th spot.
Alonso and Magnussen were joined at the foot of the top 10 by Stoffel Vandoorne, closely followed by Force India’s Sergio Perez, who split Renault pair Carlos Sainz Jr. and Nico Hulkenberg.
Lance Stroll finished the session in 14th place but stopped on track after the chequered flag due to his FW41 entering engine saving mode.
Stroll crawled around the opening half of the lap before eventually coming to a halt at Turn 7.
Esteban Ocon was 15th for Force India, in front of Toro Rosso duo Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly, and the aforementioned Sirotkin.
Sauber finished firmly at the rear of the pack; Marcus Ericsson edged rookie Charles Leclerc by a mere 0.001s, but their best laps were over eight-tenths down on Sirotkin, fully emphasising the deficit facing the team in its ambition to re-join the midfield group.
