Mark Hughes: Mercedes 1-2 in Austria isn’t what it seems

Variable drizzle threatened to muddy the competitive waters in the long runs of Friday afternoon, but the underlying sense of the sessions was that Red Bull retain the advantage despite Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas going 1-2 for Mercedes in the single lap times of the afternoon.

A pattern of recent events is that Red Bull runs its Honda power unit less aggressively on Friday than Mercedes, at least on the single lap runs.

“It’s almost like it used to be with us,” commented Hamilton. “It’s almost like they’ve got the qualifying mode that we used to have. It’s impressive.”

It was a sentiment Bottas concurred with. “It’s just practice, so you don’t know what the others are doing,” he said.

“The car felt better than this time last week but no doubt [Red Bull] are still strong.

“They are still gaining in a straight line which is a bit of a weakness for us. We’ll see in qualifying when everyone turns up their engines.”

Last week showed clearly that Red Bull gained 0.25s down the straights. During the best Verstappen lap today, there was no advantage over the Mercedes on the straights, despite both cars carrying the same wings as a week ago.

In the long runs, the GPS data suggested a power increase in the Red Bulls, which would be consistent with that 0.2s advantage they had last week.

Verstappen was carrying the confidence of the championship leader in a car in which he’s very comfortable. “We didn’t have a perfect FP2,” he claimed, “but there are no real problems. Mercedes looked quite quick on the softs so we just have to make sure we have a little more pace on that compound because we looked stronger on the medium and in the long runs, which at the end of the day is the most important for the race.”

With the tyre choice being one step softer this weekend than around the same venue last week, the soft C5 proved only very slightly quicker over a lap than the medium C4 and so for Red Bull and Mercedes at least, it would seem the medium is the natural tyre on which to go through Q2 on and therefore start the race with.

Verstappen is putting the Merc’s small advantage over him in the single-lap times to its suitability to the soft, whereas the Mercedes drivers seem to think the Honda’s Saturday power step will more than overcome that.

Practice 2 Results

“We have made some improvements since last week,” admitted Hamilton, “but not by the two tenths/one-and-a-half tenths I think they have on us. On a single lap it felt pretty good.”

In the morning session, Hamilton tried the set-up he’d been experimenting with on the simulator. It was not a success. “What I tried in the sim is what I started with in FP1 and it was a struggle, the car just wasn’t happy.

“So I went back more to what I had last week and it felt much better. So I’m not going to change it too much now. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Most of the time when we try to eke out more from it, it gets worse.”

There was some light drizzle in the latter part of the afternoon session which coincided with the long runs but as everyone was out at much the same time, comparisons could still be made. They are shown in the chart below.

Driver	Mediums	Prototype
Valtteri Bottas	1m09.440s (15 laps)
Max Verstappen	1m09.550s (17 laps)
Sergio Perez	1m09.727s (19 laps)
Lewis Hamilton (1st run)	1m09.750s (5 laps)
Lewis Hamilton (2nd run)	1m09.730s (7 laps)
Charles Leclerc	1m09.829s (11 laps)
Carlos Sainz		1m09.870s (9 laps)
Kimi Raikkonen	1m09.896s (14 laps)
George Russell	1m09.914s (10 laps)
Pierre Gasly	1m10.103s (8 laps)

Hamilton’s running is divided into two runs as he suffered an off through the Turn 4 gravel on his long run which required a stop for a damage check.

The experimental rear tyre was tried by several teams for the long runs. It’s the equivalent of the C4 medium but with a tougher construction allowing it to run 2psi lower. The feedback from the drivers was that it felt very little different.

Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez did not put a clean lap together on his sole low-fuel lap on the softs so is not realistically represented, but he is still struggling with some elements of the car’s balance. “I’m not feeling fully comfortable with the car on the softer compound yet,” he admitted.

“We need to analyse the data tonight to try and get the pace back to where we would expect it to be, ready for qualifying tomorrow. We seemed to be quite far away from the balance with the low fuel initially but we corrected that quite quickly.” His long runs were typically strong and bode well for Sunday.

McLaren ran a typically low-key Friday, concentrating on the race and so don’t figure all that strongly. Expect them to come alive tomorrow as it’s a track that clearly suits the traits of the car.

Ferrari was struggling to make the C5 soft tyre last, with significant graining of both front and rear left. It will be hoping that it can avoid having to use it to get out of Q2 and in that way do the favoured medium/hard strategy of the top teams. Those having to start on the soft may well be looking at a theoretically slower two-stop race here.

Heading the best of the rest group on single-lap pace was Aston Martin but the margins are so small in this part of the grid that at least three teams might occupy that place. Ferrari’s struggles on the soft might debar it from that particular contest.