REPORT: A challenging first day at Albert Park

It was a challenging return to Albert Park on the first day of running, as Alex suffered an accident, bringing a premature end to his opening practice session.

Both drivers headed out to complete their first laps of the 2024 Australian Grand Prix weekend on medium tyres, and both clocked up nine laps before a brief return to the pits.

A maiden run on the soft compound ended prematurely when Alex lost control of his car after catching the curb on the exit of turn 6, before colliding with the wall and bringing out a red flag.

Logan’s best lap saw him finish FP1 in 14th, while Alex finished the session 12th on the leaderboard.

Alex was unable to participate in FP2 in the #23 while the team continued to assess the damage from the incident – and that left Logan to take up the mantle for the rest of the afternoon.

It was a solid session for our American driver, who finished in P13 with a 1:18.578.

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, had this to say:

"It has been a difficult day for us with issues in both sessions. Alex lost the car having hit the kerb in FP1, causing a lot of damage to the car, including the chassis. He was unable to run in FP2 as a result. Logan damaged his Medium tyres early in FP2 and so his high fuel work was done on the Soft tyre, which wasn’t our intended plan.

"We have a lot of work to do tonight to understand where the performance of the car is, particularly at high fuel. At low fuel, the car is working well, and we know where we can find more time, but we didn’t learn much at high fuel today and so it is less clear what we need to do in preparation for the race.

"We’ll work through the data that we have and complete some further testing during FP3 to finalise the setup for Qualifying."

Alex added, "It was a tricky session in FP1 and I paid the price for it. I ran a little wide and went up onto the exit curb and bottomed out when I landed, so it’s frustrating.

"I think we have a car that’s quite quick this weekend, so it’s disappointing to not have been able to participate in FP2. We don’t have a spare chassis and I know the team are working hard on what repairs can be made, so we’ll know more soon."

Finally, Logan said, "there was good grip out there compared to last year but the wind picked up this afternoon, making it a little more unpredictable.

"Generally, on low fuel, we have a decent car with the good news being that we’re at the fine-tuning stage, however, I obviously lost that Medium tyre on the spin and didn’t get a high fuel run.

"Despite this, we’re in a good place ahead of tomorrow and there’s still some more to get out of the car. As a team, we’re on the backfoot a bit this weekend but we’ll do what we can."