Perez tops Styrian GP practice for Racing Point

Sergio Perez topped a red-flagged opening practice session of the Styrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring for Racing Point.

Perez’s benchmark, a 1m04.867s, was half a tenth short of what Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton had set in this same session at the same venue last weekend.

The red flag – which followed from an initial virtual safety car period – came about as a consequence of Nicholas Latifi’s Williams grinding to a halt exiting Turn 4.

Latifi lost drive coming up on the corner and reported to his team: “I think the engine just went, or something happened.”

His Williams team-mate George Russell had retired from the previous weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix with a Mercedes power unit issue, and had to take on a new internal combustion engine, turbo, and ICE for the Styrian GP.

By the time Latifi brought out the VSC and subsequent red flag, Max Verstappen had just posted the first sub-1m06s lap of the weekend on mediums, leading a Red Bull 1-2 with team-mate Alex Albon.

He twice improved marginally to an eventual 1m05.760s when the session resumed a few minutes later, but the hard-shod Perez moved up to second to break up Red Bull’s FP1 stranglehold.

Perez then switched to a fresh set of softs and recorded what would end up the best lap of the session, overtaking the Mercedes pair that had just taken over out front on new mediums.

And with Mercedes electing not to run the softs, only Verstappen threatened Perez’s benchmark, his own lap on new softs ultimately proving a tenth slower.

Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton made a top four split by 0.253s, the Finn jumping ahead by three-hundredths with his final push lap before the duo switched to apparent long runs.

Perez’s team-mate Lance Stroll had his best time chalked off for breaching track limits at Turn 10, but managed to subsequently lap within two-tenths of his previous best – which, like the deleted time, was good enough for an eventual fifth place.

Albon did not have a lap on softs unlike Verstappen, and wound up half a second adrift on the Dutchman in sixth, with the soft-shot McLaren of Carlos Sainz Jr in seventh – seven places ahead of his team-mate, Austrian GP podium finisher Lando Norris.

Pierre Gasly managed to get an AlphaTauri into the top eight on mediums, ahead of fellow medium-compound runner Daniel Ricciardo of Renault.

It was another muted session for Ferrari, with Sebastian Vettel 10th and Charles Leclerc 12th, despite the latter having sat second at the halfway point.

Vettel had a big lock-up at Turn 3 early on, while AlphaTauri’s Daniil Kvyat spun at the same cornrer in the final seconds of the session.

The two FP1-only drivers, Williams debutant Jack Aitken and Alfa Romeo’s Robert Kubica, were 0.029s in 17th and 18th respectively.

Kubica, standing in for Antonio Giovinazzi, was around three and a half tenths behind team regular Raikkonen, while Aitken – driving Russell’s FW43 – was comfortably clear of Latifi, whose session ended with the stoppage.

Romain Grosjean was the only Haas to set a time in 16th, as Kevin Magnussen was limited to three non-timed laps by a reported battery issue.

Practice 1 Results