Norris leads second Austrian GP practice as McLaren dominates

McLaren dominated second practice at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Lando Norris beating Oscar Piastri to top spot on Friday afternoon.

Norris was quick immediately despite having missed FP1 to give development driver Alex Dunne seat time, and he was peerless when the field switched to the soft tire halfway through the hour. The Briton set three purple sectors to lower the day’s benchmark to 1m04.580s before embarking on his race simulation on the medium-compound tire. He eclipsed teammate Piastri’s best effort by 0.157s, the Australian setting his time fractionally earlier and was subsequently deployed on a long run on the hard tire.

Max Verstappen was third at the end of the first day of Red Bull Racing’s home grand prix, but the Dutchman was twice as far from top spot as Piastri, lapping 0.318s slower than Norris. Verstappen spent the rest of the session in a race simulation with the soft tire, with which he exhibited similar long-run pace early in the stint.

Lance Stroll was a surprise fourth for Aston Martin, unexpectedly separating the frontrunners with a strong lap on softs that put him 0.442s off the pace.

Charles Leclerc was bumped down to fifth after a scrappy session that saw him regularly lose the rear axle, including on one occasion that sent him skating over the gravel at Turn 6. He ended the day 0.61s off the pace.

George Russell, who topped FP1, had no answer for McLaren’s speed, the Briton lapping 0.649s slower than Norris.

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Yuki Tsunoda wrestled his Red Bull Racing car to seventh after dipping into the gravel at Turn 6. The Japanese driver appeared ill at ease with the RB21, which seemed only reluctantly responsive to his inputs around the lap.

Gabriel Bortoleto was eighth for Sauber at 0.831s off the pace and ahead of Fernando Alonso in the second Aston Martin car.

Lewis Hamilton completed the top 10 on a pessimistic day for the Briton, who lamented “for some reason I’ve just got no pace” early in the hour before setting a best time 0.931s behind the benchmark.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli was a distant 11th, 0.957s off the pace. He ended up ahead of Liam Lawson, whose session got off to a difficult start when the Kiwi reported his car was pulling aggressively to the right, requiring him to return to pit lane for repairs. He rejoined to finish the day fractionally ahead of teammate Isack Hadjar.

Pierre Gasly complained during this race simulation that his car was “broken” and a “disaster” – though Alpine couldn’t see any issues in the data – through Turns 1 and 6 after setting the 14th-quickest time ahead of Esteban Ocon.

Williams teammates Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz slumped to 16th and 17th with mystifyingly poor single-lap pace after having both finished inside the top 10 during FP1.

Oliver Bearman followed in 18th ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and rookie Franco Colapinto.