Leclerc tops 2nd Austria GP practice as Bottas and Verstappen crash

Charles Leclerc quickest

Whereas the first practice session for the Austrian GP was relatively incident free except for a wing damage incident by Hulkenberg, the 2nd session was full of spins and crashes.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was quickest in the session at 1m05.086s, 0.331s faster than Valtteri Bottas who then proceeded to crash his #77 Mercedes.

Bottas' crash caused a red flag, as did Max Verstappen's crash. Both cars were damaged and their session ended early.

Verstappen was the first driver to crash when he lost his car midway through the final corner, causing him to spin into the wall and damage the rear of the Red Bull RB15.

Bottas' damaged Mercedes

Bottas lost his car at Turn 6, causing him to spin off through the gravel and into the wall front-first, taking the front two wheels off his Mercedes W10 car.

Bottas managed to get out of his car unassisted, but was taken to the medical center as a precaution after a crash impact of 25G was recorded.

Sebastian Vettel also went off course on his qualifying sim lap, but did not hit anything. While it ruined his lap after sitting six-tenths of a second up on the fastest time, Vettel was able to hobble back to the pits without damage.

Pierre Gasly, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz Jr. rounded out the top-5.

Accidente de Bottas !! #FP2 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/lwbLsh24eU

— 🇪🇸 ð�š-ð�š'ð�šŒð�š�ð�š˜ð�š› ð�™µð�Ÿ· (@f1pills) June 28, 2019

Vettel se salva de milagro !! #FP2 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/5FM0Q9hJ2k

— 🇪🇸 ð�š-ð�š'ð�šŒð�š�ð�š˜ð�š› ð�™µð�Ÿ· (@f1pills) June 28, 2019

Quotes

Valtteri Bottas
It was pretty big hit for me in second practice but I'm all okay with no pain. There were some gusts out there this afternoon and I think I managed to find one of them – the corners here are very tricky and very penalizing if you make even a small error. But I must say I prefer this kind of circuit which penalizes mistakes – it's how I like it and it makes it even more exciting. Before the shunt, I had an issue with the engine this morning which meant we swapped to the old one for FP1. That compromised me a little bit but we found a clear direction on car set-up. We made some pretty big changes for FP2 and it felt a lot better until the accident. So overall, a good feeling on the car performance but other teams are quick as well. It's going to be very hot this weekend, especially on Sunday, and will put the cars to the limit in terms of cooling the brakes and the engine. I think it's going to be very close on the time sheets and it should be fun in qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton
It was a clean day for me with no major issues, although I broke a couple of front wings on the curbs like a lot of other drivers. We are flat out for a large portion of the lap this year – even corners like Turns 6 and 7, Turn 9 and the last corner are seriously quick in these cars – and we have been tickling the set-up all day to improve it. Ferrari and Red Bull look quick, particularly Ferrari, and it will be interesting to see how it pans out tomorrow. This is one of those circuits where the times are always very, very close and small margins make the difference; that's a positive because it means we will have our work cut out. But that's okay: we will keep fighting and this is a circuit where you can follow other cars, so hopefully the tires will be durable as well.

Andrew Shovlin
It hasn't been an easy day. Valtteri's crew were into a power unit change before running after we found an oil leak. We fitted his spare power unit for the morning and, while the session was running, the issue was fixed so the race power unit went back in for the afternoon. The balance wasn't great in the first session, we were struggling to balance the low and high speed together, but we made good progress over the break and both drivers were happier with the car in the afternoon. Valtteri's session unfortunately ended early after his crash which meant he couldn't run the medium tire on the long run. Lewis's session was more straightforward. He was working on the Soft and Hard tires and managed to complete the planned program. We don't seem to be as competitive here as in France but that's not a big surprise; we're missing the kind of cornering sequences that the car likes, so it's hard to pull back all the time that they are finding on the straights. We're expecting the weather to get even hotter, which isn't easy for the car or the tires but hopefully it will make for an interesting race for the fans.

Max Verstappen
“My feeling in the car was good and we looked quite competitive. Of course, you always want to do better but my laps were looking quite good before the crash. I had traffic on my fastest lap so we would be a lot closer than my lap time shows. The car was working well, we still need to find a bit of a compromise between the corners and the straight-line speed but we will look at that tonight. It was very gusty and the wind wasn’t consistent which caught me out in the middle of the last corner. I lost the rear and hit the barrier pretty hard. Luckily, everything is fixable and it’s Friday so we’re not running all the race material yet. It’s just a shame for the Team as they have a lot on tonight now. It’s hard to say where we are in terms of overall performance as Mercedes didn’t do their performance laps, so I am of course a bit cautious, but from my feeling the whole car was working well today which is a positive."

Pierre Gasly
“From this morning in FP1, I felt good with the car and I was able to push, so today was positive. I felt a lot more comfortable than in France and I think we have a good direction. There was quite a lot happening in FP2 but we still managed to complete all the tests we wanted to. The conditions are really hot and it’s quite windy which makes things tricky, and I think the rising temperatures are the main thing we need to keep on top of looking ahead to Sunday. The curbs are also proving quite expensive as they’re breaking a lot of the cars! We look quite good on the timesheet with third, but we’re still four tenths off Ferrari so we need to stay focused and try to find some more pace from our package for tomorrow. Looking at our long runs, they were a bit messy and not that clean, so we will look at that a bit more closely and decide what is the best strategy for Sunday."

More to follow……

Practice 2 Results