Hamilton loses most of Austrian GP FP2, Sainz quickest

Carlos Sainz topped a second Austrian Grand Prix practice session that Lewis Hamilton missed the majority of following his crash in the final part of qualifying on Friday.

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Key moments:

> Mercedes repairs cost Hamilton three quarters of FP2

> Ferraris 1-2 from Verstappen

> Alpines, fourth and fifth, chose to sit out first 25 minutes

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Mercedes swapped Hamilton to its spare chassis owing to right-hand side damage sustained in his off at Turn 6, with different gearboxes fitted to the cars of Hamilton and team-mate George Russell – who also crashed in Q3 – from their permitted allocation.

The team, which also made floor and wing changes on both cars, said before FP2 that it hoped to be running midway through the hour-long session having had six hours between the end of qualifying and the start of practice to work on the cars.

But while Russell took to the track after 10 minutes, Hamilton’s wait to get back on track was considerably longer.

Amazing effort 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Lewis is out on track! pic.twitter.com/rCeVU6umCO

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) July 9, 2022

He eventually joined the session inside the final 15 minutes, going ninth fastest with his first timed lap on used softs before swapping to mediums.

Those on a more conventional programme opted for long running in FP2, with teams broadly opting for softs or mediums for these runs – though Russell attempted a three-lap run on hards.

Max Verstappen, who topped qualifying and will start Saturday afternoon’s sprint race from pole, was fastest for much of the session having opted to run on softs from the off.

The Ferraris took mediums for their first runs, but went fastest in the second half of the session after switching to softs, with Sainz setting a best time of 1m08.610s that put him 0.050 seconds clear of team-mate Charles Leclerc.

Verstappen ended up third, 0.168s down, with the Alpines of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon completing the top five.

Alpine chose not to send either Alonso or Ocon out in the first 25 minutes of the session, with Otmar Szafnauer saying there was still “a lot to learn about the tyres from others doing the running”.

Sergio Perez, who lost his Q3 times and best from Q2 on Friday evening and will start the sprint from 13th, was sixth in the second Red Bull ahead of Russell.

Sandwiching ninth-place Hamilton were Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) and Lando Norris (McLaren).

Practice 2 Results