F1 2017: Hamilton heads into Australian Grand Prix qualifying looking strong

With so much talk and speculation in pre-season testing revolving around whether Ferrari - or anyone else - will finally be able to challenge Mercedes' dominance in Formula 1. We got a slight hint as to what the state of play was as the opening round of the 2017 F1 season got underway with the first two practice sessions of the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne's Albert Park Circuit.

Former world champion Lewis Hamilton set the fastest times in both 90 minute sessions, setting a best time of 1min24.220sec in the opening session and managing a lap of 1min23.620sec in the second session around the 5.303km, 16-turn temporary circuit.

Both these marks were over four seconds faster than the best times set in the same sessions during the Australian GP's 2015 edition. Last year's sessions were interrupted by rain but it is worth noting that Hamilton has already managed to better the pole position time set last year. More improvements are likely to come as the circuit is not a permanent race facility and will gain more grip as support races and more F1 running will result in more rubber being laid out on it.

But the speed of the new cars aside, the big talking point was where everyone else was compared to Hamilton and his flying silver arrow.

FAST FERRARIS
The good news for fans of F1's oldest and most famous team is that the new SF70H is definitely a fast car. It was clear even though Ferrari didn't run as many laps as their rivals in the first session. This was partly down to what looked like a strategy of observing their rivals first and also because Sebastian Vettel's car spent a good amount of time in the garage in the opening session due to issues with its Energy Recovery System (ERS).

But they got plenty of running time in the second session and Vettel was able to set the second fastest lap time, 0.547 seconds behind Hamilton and 0.009 seconds ahead of Valtteri Bottas' Mercedes. Kimi Raikkonen was fourth but well behind the top three in session two, 0.905 seconds off Hamilton.

Of course, due to the ban on re-fueling since 2010 and Pirelli's directive of having to make tyres susceptible to thermal degradation since 2011, what happens over a single lap at ultimate pace doesn't necessarily have the same bearing as what happens over 305 kms in a race.

Mercedes are mindful of that and would be looking closely at how well Ferrari run in comparison to them in long runs in practice. To expect the team with the biggest budget in F1, staffed by some of the sharpest technical personnel and with two of the fastest drivers to not make gains since winter testing would be foolish.

BULLS IN THIRD
By any measure, Red Bull Racing appeared to be the third best team in F1 so far, with observers noticing erratic form from the RB13 over long runs along with the noticeable deficit over a single lap.

Daniel Ricciardo's best lap was almost seven tenths of a second slower than Hamilton's in the opening practice session but in the second session after teams did a lot more running, he was over a second behind. Max Verstappen only managed eight laps in the second session and was three tenths slower than Ricciardo.

With work still ongoing with Renault's power unit and Red Bull themselves working on updates, the team is expected to make gains this year but probably not from the outset of the season.

THE REST
All bets are off so far as to who will emerge as the fastest behind the big three with Toro Rosso, Haas-Ferrari, Force India-Mercedes and Williams-Mercedes fairly close to each other over both a single lap and over longer distances.

This was played out over both sessions but a lot of attention went the way of McLaren-Honda and Fernando Alonso. The former double world champion set the 14th and 12th fastest time in the first and second session, respectively, despite the McLaren MCL32 looking like it had no business being that far up the timing sheets.

Yes, things are indeed that bad for the second most successful team in F1 history. Largely down to Honda's problem in making their almost all-new - 90 percent new as compared to last year's - power unit reliable enough to extract its full potential.

At least there is little left by way of speculation now and we can finally see where everyone really stands tomorrow after qualifying.