Hamilton enjoys Friday clean sweep!

Grégory Demoen 24/03/2017 at 06:54

It's advantage Mercedes at the end of day one in Melbourne, with Lewis Hamilton completing a clean sweep by staying on top in FP2.

Hamilton clocked in with a 1'23.620 on ultra-soft tyres, a time well inside the pole position he achieved last year.

The three-time world champion was the only driver to end the day under the 1'23 mark, but Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel edged out Valtteri Bottas , with Raikkonen and the Red Bull pair following suit.

Verstappen had an off-track excursion, flying through the gravel trap through Turn 12 after running wide but the real drama came from Jolyon Palmer who lost control of his Renault at Turn 16 on just his fourth lap.

The incident brought out the first red flag of the session. Sauber's Marcus Ericsson spun off towards the end of the session while Haas' Romain Grosjean visited the run-off area twice, with apparently his chronic brake problems the source of the mishap.

Both Toro Rosso's of Carlos Sainz and Dany Kvyat made it into to the top ten which.

Pos	Driver	Team	Times	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:23.620	34
02	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:24.167	35
03	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:24.176	34
04	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:24.525	30
05	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:24.650	27
06	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:25.013	8
07	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:25.084	34
08	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:25.436	29
09	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1:25.478	36
10	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:25.493	39
11	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:25.591	35
12	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:26.000	19
13	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1:26.145	37
14	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:26.331	6
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:26.498	29
16	Lance Stroll	Williams	1:26.525	27
17	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	1:26.608	33
18	Pascal Wehrlein	Sauber	1:26.919	30
19	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1:27.279	8
20	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:27.549	4