Pierre Gasly confirms "no big issue" for Alpha Tauri - loose pipe disrupts morning

Gasly and Alex Albon, who drives for Red Bull Racing, suffered separate issues at around the same time and then returned to the track at identical times. Gasly's was a loose pipe problem on the Alpha Tauri, whilst Albon had a suspension issue with his RB16.

The French driver believes this is the first proper issue that the newly-named Alpha Tauri team have had in testing and has also insisted it is not a big problem despite the interrupted session.

"It's the first proper issue we've had in testing. For sure, it wasn't ideal but these things happen unfortunately. We tried to recover as much as we could in the last hour," Gasly said.

"We tried to explore a different set of directions with the car in the little time we had. There were interesting things and hopefully we can do more this afternoon.

"We always want more, if you ask us, I'd drive every day up until Melbourne, but that's what we get so we'll try to do the best and maximise every opportunity we have on the track to learn about the car. From tomorrow, we'll try to push our car a bit more."

Gasly finished in P2 behind Robert Kubica, with him and Albon completing the top three after an hour of flying laps from 11 until the end of the session at midday.

"I woke up at 5:30. I was super excited, I was ready to jump in the car at 9, but it was a bit delayed. We had loose pipes, it wasn't anything big but it delayed our running for a couple of hours. It wasn't ideal, but these things happen," Gasly said.

"I felt good straight away (with the car) - it feels like some of the things are really good and some of the things are really wrong. We just haven't found the sweet spot yet to maximise the performance of the car, which is normal."