The Formula 1 World Championship traveled to Melbourne in Australia for the opening round of the 2018 season. Following a successful debut of the new Honda / Toro Rosso partnership in pre-reason testing, hopes were high coming into the weekend with New Zealand’s Brendon Hartley targeting a championship points finish from the weekend.
 
Working through a programme of flying laps and longer race runs during Thursday’s pair of dry and warm free practice sessions, confidence remained positive amongst the team as a truer picture of their rivals pace started to emerge during the sessions. Friday morning however was quite a contrast in terms of weather conditions, with the dry warm sun replaced with heavy rain, soaking the Melbourne Grand Prix circuit. The outlook was now very different for the final free practice session of the weekend. Opting to save their engine mileage, many teams including Toro Rosso opted to complete the minimum number of laps during the challenging session.
 
Just after 5pm local time, the first qualifying session of the 2018 session began, now at a dry Albert Park with the earlier rain having cleared off and Pirelli slick tyres returning to the fore. After getting an early time on the board, Brendon waited until the closing minutes of the session, to take over a second off his previous best and secure 16^th on the grid for the opening race of the year.
 
Brendon Hartley – #28 Scuderia Toro Rosso:
“It was a little frustrating today, I think one tenth would have moved us up a few places and the car definitely had it in it. In the last lap there were a couple of small errors and it’s frustrating to be so close to the cut off to Q2. I knew there would be huge track evolution through the run but we decided to go out first – a lot earlier than the other car – which could be considered a disadvantage but it gave us the option to maybe do two laps at the end. I think it was the right call, I just didn’t quite get everything out of it to get to Q2. The good thing is the car was definitely quick enough to get to Q2 today. This morning was really encouraging in mixed conditions and equally on the long run yesterday, so I think our strength is our long run pace. Once this said, this track it’s probably one of the hardest on the calendar to pass – it’s a tall order! Tyre degradation will be a big story, so maybe managing tyres and a good strategy can bring us into the game. We’re in that midfield battle, passing will be hard tomorrow and we’ll do our best…we’ll have to wait and see.”