Verstappen leads second Styria practice, Hamilton only sixth

Max Verstappen set the pace for Red Bull in second free practice for the Styrian Grand Prix with a time of 1m03.660s, which may yet be enough for pole with concerns about thunderstorms on Saturday.

The second race of the Formula 1 season is being held again at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, but with heavy rain and potential thunderstorms forecast for Saturday there is a chance that the third free practice session and qualifying will need to be cancelled, given a compacted schedule leaves little room to run qualifying on Sunday morning.

Many F1 teams, therefore, treated the latter half of FP2 – always traditionally the time used for race-distance simulations – as a chance to potentially set the grid for the Styrian Grand Prix.

It was Verstappen who ended the session on top ahead of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.

Sergio Perez was third for Racing Point, having also occupied the top of the timesheets in FP1 and the early part of the afternoon running.

His team-mate Lance Stroll was fourth, continuing to demonstrate the Racing Point’s impressive improvement in single-lap pace at the head fo the midfield pack.

McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr was fifth, while Lewis Hamilton had a relatively anonymous afternoon in sixth place after reporting unhappiness with his Mercedes car and performing limited running.

Alex Albon suffered a spin into the gravel trap late on in the afternoon’s running, flat-spotting all four of his tyres and effectively ruining his potential final qualifying bid. He ended the session in seventh position.

Lando Norris, who will face a three-place grid penalty owing to a first practice yellow flag infringement was eighth for McLaren, with Charles Leclerc behind him in ninth for Ferrari.

Esteban Ocon rounded out the top 10, but if the results of FP2 do count in lieu of qualifying it is bad news for Daniel Ricciardo, who suffered a heavy crash when he lost control of his Renault coming into the penultimate corner and speared sideways into the barrier, causing a red flag.

It meant that he failed to set a time and the impact caused significant damage to the rear and front suspension of the car, with Ricciardo also appearing to limp as he evacuated to the medical car.

Ricciardo was later deemed fit to continue contesting the weekend.

Pierre Gasly spent much of the final half-hour of the session appearing disgruntled in radio messages back to AlphaTauri team, seemingly as a result of his frustration at not being given the track position to make the most of team-mate Daniil Kvyat’s slipstream.

Gasly and Kvyat ended the session 11th and 12th respectively.

The Alfa Romeo pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi were 13th and 14th, with George Russell finishing 15th for Williams ahead of the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel – who had multiple laps deleted for track limits infringements.

Nicholas Latifi was 17th, ahead of Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean in 18th and 19th for Haas.

Practice 2 Results