After a solid morning's work, Williams' Felipe Massa was left sidelined for much of the afternoon in Melbourne.
Massa completed 28 laps in FP1, but when it came to the second 90-minute session after lunch he was able to complete only half a dozen laps before the FW40 hit problems.
"It’s not really the great day we were expecting and unfortunately I couldn’t finish the second session," he said afterwards. "I only did six laps.
"The track was still a little bit dirty and then suddenly we had this issue in the car," he explained. "I went into neutral and couldn’t select any gears,
"It meant that I lost the opportunity to try the ultrasoft tyres and do any long runs.
"It’s a shame that we did thousands of kilometres in Barcelona [without incident] and then had this issue here.
"But I don’t think it’s a serious thing, which is positive. We need to concentrate 100% tomorrow and I really hope things can go the right way."
"We had a great session this morning," commented Williams' chief technical officer Paddy Lowe. "In FP2, unfortunately it wasn’t so good on Felipe’s side.
"We had an electrical problem which stopped the car on the circuit and brought his session to an end very early.
"We know the issue so it will be resolved easily overnight.
"He did get one run on the supersoft tyres before stopping, but unfortunately we missed out on the long runs."
GALLERY: all the pics from Friday's action
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