'No headaches' for Hamilton on Friday in Austria

Lewis Hamilton was sounding pretty happy with how things had gone in practice for the Austrian Grand Prix on Friday.

Hamilton topped both 90-minute sessions, and recorded the best time of the day with a lap of 1:05.483s. That put him almost a tenth and a half ahead of his main title rival Sebastian Vettel. It's already significantly faster than Hamilton's own 2016 pole position time of 1:07.922s

The three-time world champion admitted afterwards that the day had gone as well as he could have hoped.

It's been a really good Friday with no major headaches to complain about so far," he said. "The car feels fantastically fast here. There's already a nice balance and it feels good out on track."

"This car is so quick in comparison to what we raced here last year," he added. "It's tricky, but a proper thrill to hook up a lap."

The one hiccup during the day was when Hamilton complained over the team radio about a "big problem" going through turn 3.

"We had to swap out a spark plug during FP2," Hamilton confirmed. "But the guys did a great job to turn the car around and we still managed to complete our programme."

In total, Hamilton completed 30 laps in the afternoon to add to the tally of 38 in the morning.

"The team is in good spirits," he said. "We're all up for another exciting fight with the Ferraris this weekend.

Hamilton stays in charge in second practice

Mercedes' technical director James Allison was also sounding happy with how the team's day had gone.

"We still have a few unanswered questions after today's practice sessions," he cautioned. "But it was nevertheless a pretty promising Friday.

"We ran all three tyre compounds and they were unusually close in performance at this circuit. But it was clear that our car was decently balanced on all of them.

"We showed good pace on both low and high fuel," he added. "We have the feeling there is still a little more to be found at the lower fuel level. But it was a good start overall."

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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.