Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Vettel tops FP2 by 0.011s in Austria

Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of FP2 for the Austrian Grand Prix, heading Nico Rosberg by just 0.011s.

Ferrari set the pace on a Friday afternoon for the first time this season courtesy of Vettel's time of 1:09.600, edging out Rosberg during a highly competitive session. It was a good recovery from Vettel who only completed four laps in FP1 before stopping on track, with the quadruple world champion quickly up to speed in second practice. However, Vettel's long run was curtailed by a gearbox problem which kept him in the pits for the final 25 minutes.

Kimi Raikkonen was third as Ferrari looked strong around the Red Bull Ring, ending up a quarter of a second slower than his team-mate. There was also an encouraging lap from Pastor Maldonado to finish fourth fastest, 0.314s adrift of Vettel's time.

Lewis Hamilton struggled throughout Friday relative to his team-mate, and failed to put together a clean lap on the supersoft tyre, setting his best time on the softs after twice running off track. Those mistakes left Hamilton fifth, half a second off the pace.

The leading cars were also closely matched on the soft tyre, with just 0.2s separating the two Mercedes and Ferrari drivers. Vettel's gearbox issue saw him miss out on his long run, but Raikkonen's soft tyre pace was similar to Rosberg's on the same tyre and quicker than Hamilton on the supersofts, hinting at the potential for a close race on Sunday.

Le Mans winner Nico Hulkenberg finished FP2 sixth fastest as Force India showed encouraging pace throughout Friday having taken the updated Mercedes power unit this weekend. With Maldonado fourth, Romain Grosjean was second in the other Lotus ahead of Max Verstappen, Felipe Nasr and Sergio Perez.

There were more problems for McLaren as both drivers completed just 17 laps each throughout the 90 minutes, with Jenson Button complaining of a lack of power. Fernando Alonso was running the updated nose on the MP4-30 but similarly ended his session early, with neither driver running the supersoft tyre. However, there were signs the upgrade is an improvement as Alonso outpaced Button by 0.4s despite being hampered by reliability issues in FP1.

Williams looked strong in the morning but spent the afternoon session focusing on race pace, with Valtteri Bottas 14th and Felipe Massa 15th at a track where the two locked out the front row last season.

A threat of rain never develop in to any actual showers throughout the session, but conditions were still difficult for drivers as they dealt with low grip levels early in the weekend. Carlos Sainz took to the gravel at Turn 5 having lost the rear end of his Toro Rosso on entry, while Pastor Maldonado and Roberto Merhi had similar excursions at Turn 3.

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:09.600	28
02	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:09.611	50
03	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:09.860	41
04	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:09.914	44
05	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:10.137	49
06	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:10.160	49
07	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:10.267	38
08	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:10.356	48
09	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:10.495	39
10	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:10.585	46
11	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:10.631	50
12	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:10.686	48
13	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:10.744	40
14	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:10.746	34
15	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:11.011	42
16	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:11.517	17
17	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:11.676	38
18	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:11.919	17
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:12.522	34
20	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:13.094	34

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.