Oscar Piastri 'in pole fight' despite early scare as teams battle engine dramas

Oscar Piastri has shrugged off a nervous start to his Friday practice to set the fastest time of the day at the Australian Grand Prix.

In the opening minutes of practice one at Albert Park, Piastri reported to his team he had "no power" in his McLaren. He managed to solve the issue, but set only the sixth fastest time in the opening session.

But on Friday afternoon, Piastri's name shot to the top of the timesheets with about 20 minutes to go, where it remained for the rest of the session.

READ MORE: 'No power': Piastri's plea to team minutes into practice

READ MORE: Coach's bold call as mass Sharks exodus looms

READ MORE: 'Traitors': Government urged to act after chilling Iran threat

"Reasonably (positive start), yes. FP2 certainly on my side (of the garage) went a lot smoother than FP1," Piastri said after jumping out of the car.

"There's just so many things to get to grips with. It's very different to what we had last year, but FP2 as a session was pretty smooth.

"Was able to build some consistency and start learning properly which was good. We'll try and see what we've learned today because I think everyone's gonna find a big step overnight, so we need to try and do the same.

"(In the fight for) the front few rows, hopefully. Whether it's pole or not, I don't know."

"I've not seen what our race pace or our long-run pace looked like. I'm not sure it was as good as some others around us, but I think we looked OK.

"The biggest thing at the moment is just trying to build consistency, make things operate the way they should and FP2 it felt like we were able to get closer to doing that."

Piastri is hoping to end a long-standing home race curse - no Aussie has officially finished on the podium of their home grand prix since it joined the World Championship in 1985.

Daniel Ricciardo finished second in 2014, but was later disqualified.

Earlier, there was a collision in pit lane before cars even got on the track.

The Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad was in the transit lane, when the Mercedes of George Russell tried to push his way in.

It looked as if there was a bit of a miscommunication - it looked initially as if Lindblad was letting Russell in, so the Brit started to pull out, only for Lindblad to pull forward and run over Russell's front wing.

The Mercedes team pulled Russell's car back in, changed the front wing, and sent him on his way. Lindblad's car was undamaged.

Moments later, Lewis Hamilton did an incredible job to avoid a monumental crash on the front straight.

Travelling at speeds well in excess of 300km/h, Hamilton came across the Alpine of Franco Colapinto crawling down the track right on the racing line.

"There was a car going crazy slow on the front straight," Hamilton said on team radio.

Replays showed Colapinto's car jumped into neutral as he came around the final corner, but why he didn't get off the racing line is a mystery.

And the stewards agreed – the incident was to be investigated after the session, where he'll be called into the principal's office.

The Lindblad-Russell incident will also be investigated after the race.

There will be one more practice session on Saturday morning, before qualifying on Saturday evening.

PRACTICE TWO RESULTS