Austrian Grand Prix: Verstappen fastest as Mercedes tests upgrades

Max Verstappen set the early pace in practice for the Austrian Grand Prix just one week after leading all 71 laps of the Styrian race.

Verstappen topped each session other than practice three at the first of two back-to-back races at the Red Bull Ring last weekend and began where he left off this time around.

With a lap time of one minute 05.143secs, the Dutchman's effort was 0.266s faster than second-placed Charles Leclerc. In the other Ferrari, Carlos Sainz was third.

As a reaction to the failures in Azerbaijan, Pirelli brought tyres with a new construction to be tested in Austria with drivers obliged to complete at least 12 laps of running across two sets of rubber across the Friday sessions.

The tyres were on display on the majority of cars as the hour began, with Mercedes the first team to complete its running on the compound, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas both registering 12 timed efforts.

Mercedes spent the session evaluating updates towards the rear of the car, this evidenced by the flow-vis seen on the diffuser of Bottas' car. Although fitting soft tyres in the closing stages, Bottas remained fourth fastest with Hamilton only seventh and complaining about poor tyre warmup.

Despite being the second race in as many weeks at the Red Bull Ring, there was a number of yellow flags with drivers frequently locking brakes into turns one and three.

Lance Stroll and Nikita Mazepin both caused yellow flags to fly in more dramatic style with Stroll twice spinning at turns six and 10 with the Haas driver also rotating his car.

Fernando Alonso, George Russell and Antonio Giovinazzi all sat out FP1 with Guanyu Zhou, Roy Nissany and Callum Ilott in the driving seats.

Featuring for the first time, Zhou became only the second Chinese driver to complete laps in an official F1 session after Ma Qinghua in 2013.

Austrian Grand Prix first practice times

1. Max Verstappen [Red Bull] 1:05.143

2. Charles Leclerc [Ferrari] +0.266s

3. Carlos Sainz [Ferrari] +0.288s

4. Valtteri Bottas [Mercedes] +0.302s

5. Yuki Tsunoda [AlphaTauri] +0.331s

6. Kimi Raikkonen [Alfa Romeo] +0.443s

7. Lewis Hamilton [Mercedes] +0.566s

8. Sergio Perez [Red Bull] +0.583s

9. Pierre Gasly [AlphaTauri] +0.583s

10. Lando Norris [McLaren] +0.737s

11. Esteban Ocon [Alpine] +0.837s

12. Daniel Ricciardo [McLaren] +1.038s

13. Lance Stroll [Aston Martin] +1.060s

14. Guanyu Zhou [Alpine] +1.271s

15. Sebastian Vettel [Aston Martin] +1.301s

16. Callum Ilott [Alfa Romeo] +1.421s

17. Mick Schumacher [Haas] +1.440s

18. Roy Nissany [Williams] +1.540s

19. Nicholas Latifi [Williams] +1.835s

20. Nikita Mazepin [Haas] +2.173s

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