Styria GP: Practice team notes – Haas

Round eight of the FIA ​​Formula 1 World Championship 2021 began with a training session on Friday at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, while the teams prepared for the Styrian Grand Prix on Sunday.

The track action on Friday consisted of two 60-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 4.318-kilometer track with 10 corners.

Since thunderstorms threatened to disrupt the weekend, the FP1 remained decisively dry and offered many laps for the rookie pairing Mazepin and Schumacher. Both VF-21s ran with the Pirelli P Zero Yellow Medium base for their respective wake-up runs. By switching to the red soft tires, every driver drove his fastest laps of the first session. Schumacher delivered a best tour of 1: 07.473 (P18), with Mazepin recording a 1: 08.081 (P20) as a fast lap. Mazepin stayed on the softs to start his high-fuel stint before pitting for the medium. Schumacher returned to the middle set to run to the plaid.

Some light rain was recorded prior to FP2, but the forecast storm did not materialize, allowing a second dry session for the 20-car field. Mazepin and Schumacher immediately got to work with a few basic laps on the middle surface. Qualifying simulations meant screwing on fresh sets of the soft tires. Schumacher achieved a 1: 06.886, with which the German finished 17th overall. Mazepin finished 18th in the time table with a best time of 1: 07.404. The Russian ended his running schedule with a lively excursion on used media. Schumacher tried both his softs and his mediums for his last long run of the day.

The Uralkali Haas F1 team ran a total of 120 laps on Friday in FP1 and FP2 – 61 from Mazepin and 59 from Schumacher.

Nikita Mazepin: “The first laps in FP1 were much quieter compared to tracks that I don’t know much – such as Portugal, Baku and Monaco. Overall, it was a pretty relaxed working day. I was pretty surprised this morning when I woke up expecting it to rain heavily, but it didn’t. We did a bit of dry running, some understanding of the setup, but I’m not sure we’ll use much of that knowledge tomorrow depending on the weather. I try to be happy regardless of the factors that I cannot control. I can learn a lot from the conditions we had today, but it’s also a great learning opportunity for me and the team to get this car around in wet conditions. Let’s see what the weather brings. “

Mick Schumacher: “All in all, we improved steadily over the course of the day. We had to do whatever we wanted and I feel like we’re in a pretty decent place to do damage. There are always things that can be improved, be it in driving a car or in the car. It’s not far from what I want in the car, it’s just about finding a bit of percent here and there to get it right there I want it to be that way. I wasn’t expecting a Q2 appearance at Paul Ricard, but we were there, so hopefully we can make another surprise appearance here. “

Günther Steiner: “Not a bad session for our cars today. We ran a lot, which is the most important thing for the guys at the moment. In FP2 we were a bit afraid of rain, so we went out at the beginning to do as much as possible to do and then come back in before we ended up coming back out to do a training start, I’d say it was a pretty boring session for us but boring is good sometimes because we did everything we wanted to do. “

Take a look at our Friday gallery from Spielberg here.