Black Mercedes’ runs 1-2, pink Mercedes 3rd, in 2nd Austrian GP practice

Guaranteed to be 2020 F1 champion, Lewis Hamilton, quickest again

The works Mercedes F1 team continued its dominance of the Red Bull Ring timesheets in second free practice for the Austrian Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas showing a commanding advantage over its hapless F1 rivals.

So superior is the Mercedes car that last year's car painted pink, and driven by Sergio Perez, was 3rd quick. In other words the other F1 teams cannot even beat last year's Mercedes, let alone this year's.

The 2020 F1 World Champion (how can he not be?) Lewis Hamilton looked unbeatable with the new all-black Mercedes W11 topping the timesheets with a 1m 04.304secs lap, two tenths clear of his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas.

Perez was 3rd quick in last year's Mercedes painted pink

Racing Point’s Sergio Perez in the pick Mercedes was just a hair quicker than the fourth place man Sebastian Vettel in the best of the Ferrari drivers.

Daniel Ricciardo was an encouraging fifth quickest for Renault, ahead of top McLaren driver Lando Norris in sixth and Lance Stroll consolidating Racing Point’s impressive Friday in seventh in the 2nd pink Mercedes.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Alex Albon were 8th and 13th respectively.

Charles Leclerc was ninth for Ferrari, with Carlos Sainz Jr. in tenth after losing time when he damaged his car on the curbs.

Quotes

Lewis Hamilton
It's great to be back. It's been a long time coming. The new car obviously feels different than the 2018 car we got to test at Silverstone a few weeks ago, but I think we have also been able to continue to improve the car compared to last year, so that's a big positive. The track was a little bit greasy and while the grip will pick up, it feels like the track only improved a very small amount. It was looking good out there today, but you can never take too much from practice. You never know what power and fuel other teams are running. So we will take today's result with a pinch of salt, try and improve the car tonight and come back for the fight tomorrow.

Valtteri Bottas

Bottas 2nd quick in the superior Mercedes

It's fantastic to be back in the car. I've really enjoyed every single lap, every single run. We've been making good progress throughout the day, step by step, as it is to be expected after such a long break. It was a decent day overall, although we had a small problem with my car towards the end. The grip level was pretty low today, but I'm sure the track will ramp up over the course of the weekend. We need to stay on top of that as that can change the set-up quite a bit on this track. The main challenge will be to get the balance right for both high-speed and low-speed corners and fine tune the car for that single lap on Saturday, while keeping our race pace in mind as well. It's only Friday, the lap times will come down tomorrow with the track improving, with additional performance items from all the teams and with the drivers pushing hard, so it will be interesting to find out where we stand.

Andrew Shovlin
It's great to be back at the track after such a long time. We have quite a few new developments on the car since it last ran in winter testing, so we've had a busy day checking that they were all working as expected. We've had a couple of little niggles that got in the way of running today for both drivers; Lewis had a telemetry outage at the start of the second session that held us up and Valtteri stopped early after a gearbox problem. We're still looking into Valtteri's problem, at the moment we don't know what has caused it. This circuit hasn't been kind to us in recent years, but the car seemed to be working reasonably well from the start this year. We've still got work to do on the balance but more relevant is that we're expecting a much hotter track tomorrow that will put the tires into a different working window. Our pace seemed competitive today, but we don't really know where everyone is in terms of fuel or engine modes and we tend to see everything close up when the temperatures go up.

Lance Stroll
“It was very exciting to be driving again and it was a solid day for the team. We got a taste for the car in Barcelona during winter testing, but it’s good to see where we are relative to everybody else. We looked competitive and after so many months out of the car it was nice to get back in the groove. It’s definitely been one of the better Fridays I can remember for a long time – so that's a good sign. Today, it looked like we had the pace. So we'll see what tomorrow brings."

Sergio Perez
“It's been an interesting day. Everything is really close out there, especially on such a short track. The car feels good and I’m happy. In the factory, the team has done a tremendous job and we have a car underneath us that is working well. There's still a lot of work to do – tonight and tomorrow morning – but we are in decent shape. The margins are extremely close, so it’s going to be really important to put together some really tidy laps in qualifying tomorrow."

Max Verstappen
“It felt good to be back in the car and after a few laps you are quite easily back into the rhythm. Overall it was a positive day, the car was handling well and I’m pleased with the number of laps we did which is really important after such a long break. The lap times don’t really say anything because I broke my front wing on the push lap, so we had to fit a different wing. I think we were a little too aggressive for that and I had a spin and a little off, but nothing major. The kerbs are what they are here and it’s the same for everyone, the front wing doesn’t really like the yellow kerbs so we do have to be careful. We are I think confident and there are always things we can do better but overall it was a good day and I’m looking forward to tomorrow."

Alex Albon
“Today felt pretty good and it was nice to be back in the car. I’m happy and excited that we’re back underway and I think everyone was on it straight away which I was quite surprised about! It’s been a long time since we did this amount of running so there’s a lot to look through now ahead of tomorrow. There are a couple of things we need to work on, and there’s always a bit of time in your driving and set-up, so we’ll see where we are tomorrow but we know what to do. You’ve got to build up to the limit here as the kerbs are dangerous and some of them can be front wing killers if you hit them too hard. But overall the car felt good, I feel good, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow."

Practice 2 Results