AUSTRIAN GP: Max leads his way through FP1 followed by Ferraris

Max Verstappen picked up right where he left off after victory in the Styrian Grand Prix by topping Free Practice 1 for this weekend's Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring, ahead of Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton could only finish seventh in the opening session.

FP1 also served as a testing ground as Pirelli brought a new, even more robust, specification of rear tyre here with a view to running the new construction at Silverstone in two week's time. Teams have been supplied with two sets of the new tyres available for use in either Friday practice session.

Max Verstappen

Red Bull began on softs and switched to the prototypes, on which Verstappen set the benchmark of 1m05.5s in the first half of the session, before improving on softs to 1m05.143s with 25 minutes remaining.

Just under three-tenths back were the Ferraris: Charles Leclerc in P2 and Carlos Sainz in third, while Valtteri Bottas took P4 for Mercedes.

AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda took fifth despite a trip into the gravel at Turn 5, finishing ahead of Alfa Romeo's Kimi Raikkonen.

Hamilton improved to seventh late on, a tenth of a second behind Raikkonen and ahead of Red Bull's Sergio Perez (P8), who set exactly the same time as ninth-place Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri.

McLaren's Lando Norris rounded out the top 10 while teammate Daniel Ricciardo finished 12th, with the Alpine of Esteban Ocon between them.

Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll had a session punctuated by incidents, as he had an off at Turn 6 after 10 minutes and then spun at the final corner after 30 minutes – avoiding the barriers both times – to finish 13th, while teammate Sebastian Vettel took 15th.

Between them was the other Alpine of Formula 2 Championship leader Guanyu Zhou, standing in for Fernando Alonso to make his FP1 debut. Zhou and Stroll were the only two drivers to set their benchmarks on mediums, the rest have done so on softs.

Ferrari test and reserve driver Callum Ilott stood in for Antonio Giovinazzi at Alfa Romeo and finished behind Vettel in 16th, ahead of 2020 F2 rival (and champion) Mick Schumacher in 17th for Haas.

Roy Nissany was Williams’ young stand-in for FP1, the Israeli driver having finished a solid P18 ahead of Nicholas Latifi. In the last place was Nikita Mazepin of Haas.

Red Bull may have fired the opening salvo here in Austria but there's plenty more to come, with FP2 at 1500 local time today. Stay tuned for live coverage and all the reaction in between and beyond the sessions.

STANDINGS:

2021 F1 AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX - FREE PRACTICE RESULTS (1)
POS	DRIVER	NAT.	TEAM	TIME
1	Max Verstappen	NED	Red Bull Racing	1m05.143s
2	Charles Leclerc	MON	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1m05.409s
3	Carlos Sainz	ESP	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1m05.431s
4	Valtteri Bottas	FIN	Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1m05.445s
5	Yuki Tsunoda	JPN	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m05.474s
6	Kimi Raikkonen	FIN	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m05.586s
7	Lewis Hamilton	GBR	Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1m05.709s
8	Sergio Perez	MEX	Red Bull Racing	1m05.726s
9	Pierre Gasly	FRA	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m05.726s
10	Lando Norris	GBR	McLaren F1 Team	1m05.880s
11	Esteban Ocon	FRA	Alpine F1 Team	1m05.980s
12	Daniel Ricciardo	AUS	McLaren F1 Team	1m06.181s
13	Lance Stroll	CAN	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1m06.203s
14	Guanyu Zhou	CHI	Alpine F1 Team	1m06.414s
15	Sebastian Vettel	GER	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1m06.444s
16	Callum Ilott	GBR	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m05.564s
17	Mick Schumacher	GER	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m06.583s
18	Roy Nissany	ISR	Williams Racing	1m06.683s
19	Nicholas Latifi	CAN	Williams Racing	1m06.978s
20	Nikita Mazepin	RUS	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m07.316s

-by Amaan Attar

Source - CrashF1