The installation lap ended.
Twenty-two cars crossed the start-finish line and the energy on the circuit changed instantly. The controlled, cautious pace of the sighting lap dissolved.
The engines bit harder, and throttle inputs became sharper. The Albert Park asphalt, already warm from FP1 and FP2, absorbed the sudden load of a full field pushing toward the outer edges of their performance windows.
Q1 had officially begun.
Leo felt it through the chassis before he heard it on the radio. The cars ahead of him accelerated away with a violence that the sighting lap had suppressed. The gap in front of him opened.
He matched it — not because he was rushing, but because the tyre temperatures were still three degrees short of where he wanted them, and every smooth metre of asphalt he covered now was tyre life he would need in the final six minutes of the session.
"Fronts at 85," he said into the radio. "Rears just touched 82. Another forty seconds needed."
