Vettel cautious about Ferrari's prospects in Austria

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Sebastian Vettel was careful not to play up Ferrari's prospects for this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg.

The four-time world champion was second-fastest at the Red Bull Ring after Friday's two free practice sessions. He was only 0.147s off rival Lewis Hamilton's best time, looking much stronger this week than last time out in Azerbaijan.

"Baku was a one-off in many ways," Vettel told Sky Sports F1 after the end of FP2. "Qualifying for us wasn't good. Positioning wasn't too bad, but obviously the gap was too big.

"Just didn't feel as confident and comfortable as we should have," he added. "But Sunday was okay. Generally Sundays have been okay."

The tight and twisting Baku street circuit is a world apart from the flowing high-speed Red Bull Ring, of course. That left Vettel unsure how Friday's practice form would transfer to qualifying and race pace this weekend.

"For here, I don't know. I haven't seen much yet. It's a short track, so you'd imagine it would be close. We'll see.

"I think Mercedes is the favourite," he said. "They seem very quick no matter when they went out today. We'll see what happens tomorrow."

Vettel will have a newer engine available to him for this weekend's race. It's actually a power unit originally planned to be used in Baku, but which was switched out as a precaution.

It has now been passed fit for duty after all, and will be back in the SF70H without incurring any penalties.

"Not new, but it's definitely less mileage," he noted. "Obviously Friday is different but it should be okay tomorrow, we don't expect any trouble.

Hamilton stays in charge in second practice

While Vettel ended the day second fastest, Kimi Raikkonen was unable to find the same sort of pace. He was over six tenths slower than his team mate and was sixth fastest in both FP1 and FP2.

"I didn't do a very good one lap, not even a good first lap," the Finn sighed. "Obviously some work to be done for tomorrow. But it's a Friday, so that's okay."

Raikkonen was more worked up over an incident on pit lane in which he a nearly hit a photographer's tripod.

"Every weekend we have to try get the people - mainly photographers - under control a bit," he said after FP2.

"We're trying to do our stuff, and obviously they're trying to do theirs," he explained. "But this is a place where we drive. It's a never-ending story with the photographers.

"Unfortunately someone might get hurt. But we try and do it as well as we can, and keep them on the safe side."

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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.