Verstappen leads and Norris starts with an error in Austria ahead of today’s sprint qualifying

Verstappen won the last two races without the best car, thanks to the perfect driving in which he was able to exploit the ‘gifts’ of his rivals. It happened in Canada, with the failure of McLaren in the pits and repeated mistakes of Russell. And in Barcelona, ​​​​​​with a bad start from Norris and a bad pit stop from Mercedes together george. And a week later, in Austria, at red bull, Verstappen He began to lead Free Practice 1 ahead of Piastri, without confirming whether Lando Norris He may be at his level this weekend due to another mistake by the Briton, this time on his final lap, in his ‘qualy’ simulation turn. Lando attacked, he was on record in the first sector and ended up in the gravel at turn 4. Warning what may not happen to him again this afternoon in the sprint classification if he wants to fight Max.

Verstappen So he led Free Practice 1 by 0″276 ahead of turn one McLarenthat of Piastre (2nd), with the Ferraris more than expected from the start: Leclerc was third at 0″370 and Carlos Sainz 4th at 0″443. Carlos assured Barcelona that his car should work better in Austria after seeing how in Spain McLaren and Red Bull surprised those in red with an extra 3 tenths they didn’t expect in Q3. And immediately the Italians started at a distance, although we will have to wait for today’s sprint classification to know the real distances.

Now, sprint qualy

Free Practice 1 this Friday morning was key as it was the only session available for teams to find the key to their car’s configuration and balance for the weekend. Above all, to deal with today’s short classification. Today, starting with 4:30 p.m (DAZN) will begin the ‘qually’ sprint, which will organize the starting grid for Saturday’s sprint race (short race that distributes points to the first 8). On Saturday, after the sprint race, it’s the turn of the classification, and on Sunday, the long race. Therefore, teams will have very little room for maneuver and it is key to start well.

In that sense, while waiting to know the speed of Mercedes, it seems that McLaren can be a good rival of Verstappen for the tenth week because Ferrari started very far.

Mercedes hid

Meanwhile, Mercedes is the big unknown because they decided to completely hide without putting the soft tires in Free Practice 1. So, Hamilton is 5th at 0.569 on hard rubber and Russell is 8th at 7 tenths because of his first turn he had to abort because of the traffic. For his part, ‘Checo’ Pérez had a poor start, in 12th place, 1 second behind as he was unable to improve his turn on the medium tires with the soft tires due to the traffic he experienced

Aston Martin, good start in the Top-10

Ocon was sixth with his Alpine, with Stroll 7th with the Aston Martin. Tsunoda was 9th and the other Aston Martin, that of Fernando Alonso, was 10th. Good start for those in green on a track where Fernando Alonso He said that it is time to suffer as it happened in Barcelona and as it should happen in Silverstone. Their aim should be Q3, to be in the top 10, but they will struggle and we will have to see the tenths saved by their rivals in qualifying.

Alonso He stuck to the nail on the head of the sprint format. His hope is to start off on the right foot and find the right settings from the start in a weekend where there is only one Free Practice session before the real fire. That, and one of his rivals started to disappear, with little room to change things because the next session would be real fire: the sprint classification. So far, things have not started badly for those Silverstone with Stroll 7th at 0″699 and Alonso 10th at 9 tenths. Furthermore, Fernando was not seen making many changes to the set-up, something that is always positive.