Less than a week after Max Verstappen’s dominance of the Styrian Grand Prix the Red Bull Ring once again came to life under the dulcet tones of the hybrid F1 engines.

While the venue remained the same there were a number of new factors to consider for the second weeks Austrian Grand Prix. For the first time in 2021 the softest compound Pirelli tyre was an option for the weekend. Cooler weather conditions were also forecast of the weekend, with a 40% chance of rain across Sunday.

Times and results from FP1 and FP2 were interesting, if not necessarily indicative of what might transpire across the weekend. Just one week earlier Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon had finished P2 and P3 on Friday and then missed out on Q3 twenty-four hours later.

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas topped the times at the end of the opening day, the pair both recorded times in the 1:04’s as did Max Verstappen in 3rd. Less than 1 second separated the Top 11 drivers, with Daniel Ricciardo a further 17/100th’s further back in 15th.

Teams alternated between the softer tyre and the test tyre which is expected to be introduced at the British Grand Prix. Bottas took to the circuit with hi-vis paint smeared across the rear diffuser of the #77 as the team gathered more set-up data for qualifying and the race. Longer run simulations were undertaken to gain data on the degradation of the softer tyre, while spots of rain turned to a light drizzle during the latter stages of FP2.

The cooler conditions and different compounds saw a number of drivers including Lance Stroll, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris lose control of their respective machines. Norris, in particular, brought a small bite of humility to his moment when contacted by his engineer.

“Okay, what damage do you have,” came the call from Norris’ engineer.

“Err, talent,” the McLaren driver replied. “Just the tyres are flat-spotted.”

The combination of cooler conditions and light rain saw times drop away as teams encourage their drivers to stay on track to familiarise themselves with the greasy conditions, given the possibility of rain at some stage during Sunday’s race.

Lewis Hamilton recorded the afternoon’s best time with a 1:04.523 with Bottas and Verstappen around 2/10ths slower in second and third. Stroll, Vettel, Tsunoda, Gasly, Alonso, Norris and Giovinazzi completed the top 10, less than 1 second in arrears of Hamilton. 

“Much better than last week. Hopefully we can build from that.” Hamilton said to f1.com “We’ve made some small progress today, but I think they still have two tenths or maybe it’s a tenth and a half, something like that. We’ve definitely made some small steps forward but not enough to close the two tenths. But over a single lap, that felt OK, it felt pretty good, and I just expect them to turn up a little bit more tomorrow.

They’ve almost basically got the qualifying mode that we used to have and I said to our guys, I don’t understand where they get it from, but it’s impressive and we’ve got to work hard to try and see if we can match it tonight,” Hamilton added.

Max Verstappen was not displeased with the day’s work and is already gearing up for a tight battle in Saturday’s qualifying sessions.

“From our side we didn’t have a perfect run in FP2 but nevertheless I felt good in the car and there are no real problems,” Verstappen reported to Red Bull Racing Media. “Mercedes looked quite quick on the soft so we just have to make sure we have a little more pace on that compound because we looked stronger on the medium and in the long runs, which at the end of the day is the most important for the race. We also tested the new Pirelli prototype tyre which seemed to be fine. It did get quite greasy out there but luckily it was good enough to keep on driving so we had a good read on the long run pace. I think it will be tight again this weekend as it looks like Mercedes improved a bit but we will see tomorrow in qualifying and the most important thing is to make sure we look after the softer compounds in the race.”

While 15th place was a far cry from P2 the week before, Daniel Ricciardo was none-the-less satisfied with the progress the team had made and more confident of a better result come Saturday.

“It’s been an interesting day. From the classification it doesn’t look like a good day, but we actually made some progress in a few areas,” Ricciardo said to McLaren Media. “We’ll just try to make another step tomorrow and maybe that puts us in the fight. If I didn’t know the classification, I’d be more optimistic with the day, but I think just some fine-tuning is needed. We’ll keep chipping away to find a few more tenths overnight and I think that’ll put us where we need to be. We’ve got some work to do, but we’re looking alright.”

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