Fernando Alonso set the early pace in second practice at the Australian Grand Prix before rain affected the majority of the session.

Verstappen topped the first session, run in dry conditions, ahead of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton was only 13th in the second, with team-mate George Russell fourth.

Hamilton’s dry-weather running was curtailed by a decision to pit for set-up changes in the front suspension.

Verstappen also appeared to be unhappy with his car balance in the dry, the world champion running wide over the grass at the first chicane before setting his fastest time.

But the Dutchman said his problem was more the lack of grip from the track surface in the dry than the car.

“It was not even so much about the car, it was just very low grip out there,” Verstappen said. “The tarmac seems to be really slippery.

“And it is quite tough to switch on the tyres, so it is difficult to push, and with interruptions you never really get into a rhythm. We will look into what to do and I think the car will be competitive.”

It led to a scrappy day for Verstappen, who leads the world championship by one point from team-mate Sergio Perez after the first two races of the season.

Perez’s attempts to set a quick time in the second session were stymied by slower cars getting in his way on each of his laps and he ended up seventh fastest.

The Mexican described his day as “just a mess”.

“I think we are going to be going somehow blind into the race,” he said. “It is going to be interesting.”

Alonso said: “In P1 we concentrated on some test items that we wanted to tick the box (on) and then in P2 it was a 20-minute session only. Still some jobs to do tomorrow, especially on the tyres into the race, some long runs or something that we were missing today. But so far the car seems to behave well.”

How did Mercedes get on?

Russell said: “P2 was a little bit frustrating for everybody with the weather coming in a little bit surprisingly.

“It was a reasonably good session for us, we definitely made a step from P1, which was a good thing.

“We made a lot of set-up changes over the break. We have been doing some good steps recently, changing quite a few things and getting the car into a nicer window as the weekend progresses. That’s quite satisfying sitting in the drivers’ seat.

“We need to see how it translates into tomorrow but definitely P1 I wasn’t very happy with the car and P2 I was pretty happy, so not too bad.”

He added that qualifying might take on a different shape from the usual one lap on each set of tyres.

“You can get lots of laps out of the tyre so in qualifying we will be doing lots and lots of laps,” Russell said. “That’s different from the norm so that’s exciting.

“If we really pull everything together, the third row, between P5 and P8 is where we’re looking.”

Hamilton’s day was the opposite of Russell’s.

“This morning was good, this afternoon wasn’t so good,” he said.

“It felt a little bit better this morning. We made some changes, they didn’t work and we will revise those tonight and then it rained so it wasn’t the greatest of sessions.”

The forecast is for dry weather for the weekend, and after a cool Friday temperatures are set to drop further into Saturday, to a maximum of 15C, before sunshine and a maximum of 18C for the race on Sunday.

What happened in the opening session?

In the first session, Verstappen lost control of his Red Bull at Turn Four towards the end of the hour’s running on his first lap on a second set of soft-compound tyres.

Verstappen was 0.433secs quicker than Hamilton in that session.

Perez also lost control of his car on his run on soft tyres in the first session, in his case at Turn Three. He ended up with the third-fastest time with a lap on medium tyres.

Team principal Christian Horner admitted in the break between the sessions that neither Red Bull driver had been happy with their car in the first hour.

Alonso was fourth fastest in the first session, ahead of the Ferraris of Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

McLaren’s Lando Norris was seventh and eighth in the two sessions.

Piastri impresses in the wet

Norris’ team-mate, the Australian rookie Oscar Piastri, was consistently fast in the wet conditions later in the session when many drivers explored the track on intermediate tyres.

Williams driver Alex Albon set the fastest time on intermediate tyres as the track began to dry towards the end of the session.

The first session was punctuated by a 10-minute red flag caused by the failure of F1’s GPS system, which tracks car position on track.

Governing body the FIA said the session needed to be stopped “for safety reasons with teams not being able to monitor car position and closing speed”.