Max Verstappen has dominated Austria’s sole practice session for Red Bull Racing ahead of qualifying later today.
Verstappen left his fastest lap until the final seconds of the hour-long session, setting a time of 1m05.742s to beat Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz by 0.241s.
The Dutchman set his time on the medium tire, whereas most of the rest of the field, including Sainz, used a set of softs in the closing stages of the session. The gap between the soft and medium compounds was around 0.4s at this circuit last season. If that difference in performance were to be replicated this weekend, it would suggest Verstappen has a formidable 0.6s advantage over the rest of the grid.
It wasn’t completely smooth sailing for the world champion, though. On the hard tire he struggled with understeer, and he needed three cool-down laps between time attacks on the medium tire to coax out his session-topping time. Verstappen also goes into qualifying this afternoon without having sampled the soft compound.
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Sainz and Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc took their updated Ferrari cars to second and third, with just 0.029s separating them on the time sheet.
Lewis Hamilton led for much of the session with the hard tire but ended up 0.509s off the pace after his single flying lap on softs before switching back to hards for the final laps of the hour. The Briton’s only slip-up came 20 minutes into the session, when he was pinged for speeding in the pit lane by 0.12mph, earning the team a €100 fine.
Sergio Perez was fifth and 0.52s slower than Verstappen, although he also eschewed the soft compound, in theory placing him in the battle for second.
Lance Stroll led the way for Aston Martin in sixth ahead of Haas driver Kevin Magnussen. Fernando Alonso, however, was another not to use the softs in the second Aston Martin car. He wound up eighth and 0.914s off the pace.
George Russell was ninth and the last driver within a second of Verstappen’s benchmark, while Zhou Guanyu completed the top 10 at 1.038s adrift.
Alex Albon completed just 23 laps with an unusually brief Williams run plan considering the importance of the single practice session, but the Thai driver was a competitive 11th ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Nico Hulkenberg in the second Haas.
Valtteri Bottas was 14th ahead of AlphaTauri teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries.
American rookie Logan Sargeant had a similarly short run plan in the second Williams but got himself ahead of Alpine teammates Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly in 18th and 19th. The French duo had excuses for their lack of pace — Ocon set his quickest time on the medium tire, while Gasly’s lap on softs was incomplete.
Lando Norris had a disrupted session in his heavily upgraded McLaren, spending the final portion of the session garaged and with mechanics working on the front of his car after just 20 laps on a single set of mediums.
