McLaren dominated his second practice at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Randorris hitting Oscar Piastri into the top spot on Friday afternoon.
Norris quickly got quick despite missing FP1 to give development driver Alex Dunn’s seat time, and he was peerless when the field switched to soft tires mid-hour. Briton set up three purple sectors to lower the benchmark for the day to 1M04.580 before embarking on a race simulation with medium compound tires. He overturned the best efforts of his teammate Piastri at 0.157, and the Australian set his time a little earlier, then deployed over a long period of time on hard tires.
Max Verstappen was third at the end of the opening day of Red Bull Racing’s home grand prix, but the Dutch rapped a lap that was 0.318s slower than Norris, from twice as far away from Piastri. Verstappen spent the rest of his session simulating races on soft tires.
Lance Stroll was the fourth surprise for Aston Martin, unexpectedly separating the frontrunner with a soft, strong lap where he placed 0.442 out of pace.
Charles Leclerc hit fifth after a crude session where he saw him regularly lose his rear axle, including skating on gravel on six turns.
George Russell, who headed FP1, had no answers about McLaren’s speed.
Yuki Tsunoda wrestled the Red Bull Racing Car seventh after soaking it in gravel for six turns. The Japanese driver looked easily sick with the RB21.
Gabriel Boltreto was in eighth place in Sauber, 0.831 seconds from Fernando Alonso’s pace in the second ston martinker.
Lewis Hamilton completed the top ten on a British pessimistic day. Britton lamented that “for some reason they don’t have the pace” before setting a best time of 0.931 seconds behind the benchmark.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli was in 11th place, 0.957 seconds away from the pace. He ended before Liam Lawson. His session called for a return to the pit lane for repairs as Kiwi got off to a difficult start when he reported that his car was pulling aggressively to the right. He rejoined to finish the day a little before his teammate Isack Hadjar.
During the race simulation, Pierre Guthrie complained that his car was “broken” and “disaster” (although Alpine didn’t see any issues with the data) was a “disaster” through turns 1 and 6 after setting the 14th quarter ahead of Esteban Ocon.
Williams teammates Alex Albon and Carlos Senné went 16th and 17th on a mysteriously poor single-lap pace after finishing within the top 10 during FP1.
Oliver Baerman was 18th ahead of Nico Halkenberg and rookie Franco Colapinto.
