Austrian Grand Prix: Red Bull’s Max Verstappen fastest in first practice

Second practice is dwell on 5 Reside Sports activities Further and the BBC Sport web site at 14:00 BST

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the tempo in first practice on the Austrian Grand Prix, with title rival Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes down in seventh.

Verstappen was 0.266 seconds faster than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in a session made unrepresentative by the groups testing a brand new tyre for Pirelli.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was third fastest forward of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda.

Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen was sixth fastest forward of Hamilton.

The brand new Pirelli rear tyre is a beefed-up building geared toward making the tyres safer, after the 2 high-speed failures suffered by Verstappen and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll on the Azerbaijan Grand Prix final month.

Every driver has to do a minimal of 12 laps on the brand new tyre in the course of the course of Friday’s two classes. Pirelli will then analyse the info and whether it is glad, the brand new tyre might be launched on the subsequent race, the British Grand Prix.

Verstappen, who dominated the Styrian Grand Prix on this identical monitor final weekend, mentioned he was instantly comfy with the Red Bull from his first run on Friday morning.

Mercedes have spent the three days for the reason that final race attempting to work out if there may be something they will do with the set-up of the automotive to make them extra aggressive this weekend.

The climate circumstances are cooler than final weekend however Pirelli has introduced a softer tyre choice for this second race, with the three softest compounds from its vary.

Behind Hamilton, Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly and McLaren’s Lando Norris accomplished the highest 10.

There have been reserve drivers in three of the vehicles – Chinese language Guanyu Zhou was 14th in the Alpine, Briton Callum Ilott 16th in the Alfa Romeo and Roy Nissany 18th in the Williams.

Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll had a few high-speed spins – one at Flip Six and one on the last nook – however there have been no crashes in the hour-long session.