Everything that happened in first Austrian GP F1 practice

Max Verstappen headed 2022 Formula 1 title rival Charles Leclerc in the sole practice session before Austrian Grand Prix qualifying at the Red Bull Ring.

---

Key moments:

> Verstappen leads FP1 throughout

> Two red flags in only pre-qualifying practice session

> Norris causes first by stopping on track

> McLaren team-mate Ricciardo experiments with and without Gurney flap

---

The Austrian GP marks the second sprint race weekend of the season, and as such track time prior to qualifying – which is brought forward to Friday – was at a premium.

The one hour of FP1 teams got prior to the session was cut even shorter, though, with two stoppages for red flags.

Lando Norris, whose McLaren team opted to change a number of power unit components prior to FP1, caused the first when he stopped his MCL36 out on track reporting “smoke from under my seat”.

🚩 RED FLAG 🚩

📻 "I'm on fire I need to stop… there's smoke from under my seat so I'd rather get out alright"

Lando Norris has stopped in the middle sector during Friday's only practice#AustrianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/nJ3kgwpLYb

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 8, 2022

A second red flag was later shown for debris on the exit of Turn 6.

Verstappen headed the session almost from start to finish – going fastest with his first run five minutes into the session and remaining there even after teams switched to soft-tyre running following the second red flag.

In the end, the Red Bull driver ended up with a best time of 1m06.302s on soft tyres, a quarter of a second ahead of Ferrari’s Leclerc – who improved marginally late on.

Mercedes’ George Russell took third, with Sergio Perez fourth in the second Red Bull – albeit half a second down on his team-mate, and even then only after a late improvement.

Before that, Perez – who went off at Turn 4 early in the session – had been in the lower reaches of the top 10 and closer to a second off Verstappen’s pace.

Finding the limits…

And Checo goes over them momentarily into Turn 4 😬#AustrianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/h1OY4pHW2C

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 8, 2022

Lewis Hamilton was fifth ahead of the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, with British GP winner Carlos Sainz seventh ahead of the best of the medium-shod cars, Fernando Alonso’s Alpine.

Mick Schumacher (Haas) and the AlphaTauri of Yuki Tsunoda completed the top 10.

Valtteri Bottas, who will start Sunday’s race from the back of the grid after Alfa Romeo opted to overhaul his power unit, was 14th.

Norris’s problem curtailed his running early and consigned him to the slowest time, though team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was only 17th fastest.

McLaren experimented by running his car with and without a rear wing Gurney flap towards the end of the session.

Team principal Andreas Seidl said after the session that Ricciardo had also experienced DRS issues.

Practice 1 Results