Verstappen dominates and leads first free practice of the Formula 1 Austrian GP

It's a different weekend in Formula 1. The Austrian GP is the second event of the season that features a sprint race, something that changes the traditional schedule of three days of track activities. Thus, the first free practice session in Spielberg, held this Friday morning (8), was the only session before the official qualifying, scheduled for later. Max Verstappen got the best of it.

On the track owned by Red Bull, the Red Bull team was way ahead. Verstappen was always much faster than everyone else, even the Ferrari duo and teammate Sergio Pérez. This is something that puts the championship leader as the favorite for qualifying later on.

Truth be told, Charles Leclerc even managed to get close at the end and was 0s255 slower than Verstappen. The Monegasque was followed by George Russell, who cheered up Mercedes at the start of the weekend. Sergio Pérez was fourth and was joined in the top-10 by Lewis Hamilton, Kevin Magnussen, Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, Mick Schumacher, and Yuki Tsunoda.

TL1 even had its red flag. Lando Norris stopped on track after reporting car trouble and smoke below his seat. With the orange car on the edge of the track and in need of being pulled out, race direction stopped the session for about eight minutes. Not much, but important in a scenario where there is no other practice before the sprint race.

A little later, there would be another red flag. With 22 minutes to go, a large piece of debris was identified: it needed to be removed. It turned out to be part of the finish line, positioned in the escape area of one of the corners, right next to the zebra. It lasted six minutes.

GRANDE PRÊMIO follows LIVE and IN REAL TIME all the activities of the Austrian GP weekend. Qualifying is scheduled for later today at 12:00 pm (GMT-3).

Check out how TL1 went:

Nothing wrong. On time, with a sunny day and some wind on the track, Formula 1 opened the pit-lane and released the cars for the first and only free practice before the official qualifying later today, which sets the starting grid for the sprint race in Austria. As it usually happens in sprint race weeks, the track was busy from early on.

No team preferred to wait, on the contrary: they all decided to take the track as soon as possible. The only driver who was not on track after two minutes was Valtteri Bottas - the reason was an engine change that would drop the Finn to the back of the grid. After the first five minutes, 16 drivers had already entered the clock with fast laps. Sergio Pérez had even made a run off the track and paraded on the gravel.

Everyone preferred to test the medium tires at the beginning of the week. The range of tires chosen by Pirelli for the weekend was the softest possible, with the C3, C4 and C5. Quite a difference to Silverstone, when the harder range was used. The C3, harder in Austria, were the soft tires in England a week ago.

The strongest driver in the first set of timed laps was championship leader Max Verstappen. With a strong Dutch crowd, the 'Orange Sea', present, Verstappen opened with 1min07s720 and a good distance in first place. He had just under 0s5 seconds to Fernando Alonso, in second. Ferrari was far behind, still not making much effort.

Pierre Gasly asked AlphaTauri about the wind, and the team confirmed that it was indeed a windy day. The strongest gusts were over 30 km/h at that moment. After ten minutes, only the two Aston Martin drivers were not on the timer. Soon after they would come in.

Mercedes' first appearance of the day was with Lewis Hamilton saying he was not understanding what the engineer was asking him to do. Some cordless phone rolling in a Mercedes that has not had good years at the Red Bull Ring. Ferrari came out on top with a competitive lap from Charles Leclerc going into second place, but Verstappen was also starting at 1min07s496 and reinforcing the lead.

With 20 minutes of practice, however, the red flag came out. Lando Norris had problems on the track with his McLaren car and pulled over right there. The single practice before qualifying became even shorter, because the stopwatch kept running. McLaren's radio showed that Norris claimed to have smoke coming out from under his seat, which caused him to get out of the cockpit as quickly as possible.

It took about eight minutes for the track to be cleared. And Ferrari soon showed up with soft tires to swallow up Verstappen's laps. With half of practice over, Leclerc was leading and Carlos Sainx was second, with Verstappen third. Kevin Magnussen is fourth, while Alonso, George Russell, Sergio Pérez, Esteban Ocon, Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher rounded out the top-10.

But it was a rapidly changing scene. The laps started to drop a lot at the beginning of the second half of practice even though medium tires were still the choice of the majority. Besides Ferrari, Verstappen went out on soft tires to regain the lead with a 1min06s302.

McLaren had suffered problems with Norris and showed a strangely large opening of Daniel Ricciardo's DRS every time that component was activated. When it was time for the soft tires to come out on the track, another red flag: now it was the fault of debris on the track.

The situation is that it was a piece of finish from the track itself, apparently rubber, and that it was originally placed between the zebra and the escape area. With the movement of the cars there, a piece was cut and thrown onto the track, but much of that finish was coming loose from the position where it should be, so the inspector was pulling it out. Just six minutes later, everything was back to normal.

With the appearance of more soft tires, Mercedes were the ones who surged ahead. Verstappen and Leclerc held on to the top two positions, but Russell and Hamilton were third and fourth ahead of Sainz. Alonso was sixth, better than Perez. Magnussen, Lance Stroll, and Vettel rounded out the top-10. Aston Martin's pace was reasonably interesting after suffering in England. That, of course, with 15 minutes to go.

But the final minutes were not all that eventful. There was time for Bottas to escape from the track and a few complaints. Verstappen left his regrets on two laps in a row: he thought he was blocked by Bottas in one turn and by Stroll in the other. Either way, he couldn't improve his time at the end, while Leclerc jumped to 0s255 behind him. Gasly also found himself blocked and called the person responsible an idiot, who, coincidentally, was his friend Leclerc. There was still Pérez climbing up to fourth, but not much else. Leadership and favoritism to Verstappen.

F1 2022, Austrian GP, Spielberg, TL1: