The ninth round of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship 2021 began with training on Friday at the Red Bull Ring, while the teams prepared for the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Track action on Friday consisted of two 60-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 4.318-kilometer track with 10 corners – conditions were cooler than the previous weekend, with Friday being mostly cloudy.
Mazepin and Schumacher began FP1 sampling of the Pirelli prototype rear tires of the VF-21 – the tires were tested in free practice to assess their effectiveness in improving compound robustness. Each driver drove a 10-lap stint on the prototype before switching to the current P Zero Yellow Medium tires for an 8-lap exit. The opening session for the Haas pairing ended with runs on the softer red rubber – the fastest laps of the morning. Schumacher scored a 1: 06.583 for 17th place while Mazepin got a 1: 07.316 for 20th overall.
Both cars shared an identical run plan to start the FP2 with a baseline on the middle rubber followed by qualifying simulations on the soft tires. A 1: 05.911 was Schumacher’s fastest time of the session and took 18th place in the time table. Mazepin set a best time of 1: 06.173 and thus placed 20th in the Russian time table. High-fuel runs with pit stops ended the planned activities on Friday.
The Uralkali Haas F1 Team ran a total of 129 laps on Friday in FP1 and FP2 – 65 from Mazepin and 64 from Schumacher.
Nikita Mazepin: “This car has a tough aero package – one of the toughest I’ve ever driven. Coming from junior formulas, more aero balance means more oversteer, but in F1 that definitely doesn’t mean with things like that others “how the tires work during the lap and all sorts of things that affect the warm-up. It’s pretty extreme and not very easy I would say. But we use these Friday exercises to experiment with the setup and then try then and redirect both cars into something that could potentially bring us a good profit. The free training time has been reduced compared to last year, we’re just trying things out – so tomorrow should be more balanced and complete, we say. “
Mick Schumacher: “Today’s run was completely different – we saw that the lap times fell pretty quickly compared to last week. I think we’re a little faster compared to last week and I think that’s just because you know where to put the car, it was interesting, especially on the long runs because that’s probably the weather, that we’ll find in the race. We have collected good data and now it’s about analyzing and seeing what we can do better for Sunday’s race. “
Günther Steiner: “Well, we drove 129 laps today, so it was a good day with no problems. As always, we just tried to get the best out of what we have for this weekend. Of course we have. We have some data from last weekend, so we didn’t start unprepared – we just tried different things and then also tried the new prototype tire for Pirelli. Overall, it wasn’t a bad day. “
Take a look at our Friday gallery from Spielberg here.
The post Austrian GP: Exercise Team Notes – Haas first appeared on monter-une-startup.
