Hamilton leads Mercedes one-two in second Grand Prix practice in Austria

Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the second workout for the Grand Prix of Austria on Friday, with Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team Teammate Valtteri Bottas It is a double victory for the German brand.

Hamilton, who was only seventh in the first session, set the fastest time of 1: 04.523 to get the applause over the course of the afternoon, a session in which it rained lightly in the closing stages.

For the second time in a row, the teams were able to test PirelliPrototype tire before the planned launch on the Great Britain Grand Prix, and most took the opportunity to run it in the early stages of the sixty-minute run.

Valtteri Bottas was the first of the front runners to complete a lap on the regular tires but his best time of 1: 04.712 wasn’t enough to top the session as team-mate Hamilton was nearly two-tenths faster.

There was a small moment for Hamilton when it started to rain and the reigning champions ran off the track and through the gravel at turn four.

Behind the two Mercedes came the morning pacemaker Max Verstappen, with the current championship leader Red Bull Racing in the end two tenths of a second behind Hamilton’s best time.

Perhaps the surprise of the meeting was the pace of the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula 1 team, With Lance walk and Sebastian Vettel in the end fourth and fifth fastest while Yuki Tsunodais a good day for Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda finished sixth with him, just ahead of his team-mate Pierre Gasly.

After the opening session was missed to allow test drivers in Guanyu Zhou some sitting times, Fernando Alonso was back in the driver’s seat with Alpine F1 team and finished eighth, although the Spaniard was not happy with the traffic in the final corners, which endangered him a few times.

Lando Norris survived a spin in turn one and finished ninth for the McLaren F1 teamwhile the top ten was rounded off by Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN‘s Antonio Giovinazzialthough, like Alonso, missed the first meeting as the team gave Callum Ilott an appearance in FP1.

A driver who will be disappointed where he ended up on Friday will be Red Bull’s Bull Sergio Perez, with the Mexican missing the top ten in eleventh place, with the second Alpine of Esteban Ocon just behind in twelfth place.

Perhaps the most disappointed team on the grid will be Scuderia Ferrari, With Carlos Sainz Jr. and Charles Leclerc They finished thirteenth and sixteenth after the rain of the late session after finishing in the top three in the morning.

Kimi Raikkonen was fourteenth for Alfa Romeo ahead of McLaren Daniel Ricciardo, while George Russell led the Williams races/Uralkali Haas F1 Team Fight in the seventeenth. Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin were eighteenth and twentieth for Haas, on either side of the second Williams of Nicholas Latifi.

Red Bull Ring Free Practice 2 result