A promising Friday in the Styrian foothills
The practice day for the Austrian Grand Prix provided an eventful and informative start in hot weather, with track temperatures reaching 50°C. The team tested the soft (C5) and medium (C4) tire compounds to understand how the tires behaved on the circuit and to manage tire degradation over the two sessions. In doing so, the team preserved both sets of hard tires for the rest of the weekend. Both drivers showed promising pace on the long runs, with tire management remaining a key focus under the demanding conditions. The first practice session ended with both drivers at the top of the timesheets: Kimi in first place and George in second. In the second practice session, the entire field ran more representative programs, giving a clearer picture of the competitive order, as several teams focused on work with the medium tires. Kimi was again the fastest in the second practice session, while George ended the day in sixth place. Both drivers ran the same tire compounds as the team gathered data ahead of Sunday’s race. On a flying lap, Kimi showed excellent pace on the softer C5 compound and was two tenths quicker than Norris in the McLaren.
Kimi Antonelli
It’s been a clean and productive day for us. From FP1 onwards, I’ve felt comfortable in the car, which gave us a good platform to work from as we built through the sessions.
The hot conditions will continue to make things quite challenging, particularly in terms of tyre management. Keeping the tyres in the right working window without overheating is important, so that’s an area we’ll continue to focus on.
We’ve gathered a lot of useful information, but there’s still work to do and the picture will likely evolve overnight. We’ll analyse everything in detail and focus on making the right improvements ahead of Qualifying.
George Russell
It’s been a solid day overall and a good place to start the weekend. The car felt competitive from the outset, and we’ve got a solid base to work from, but with the margins so tight, it’s clear a few teams are going to be in the fight.
From my side, there are still a few areas to improve. It’s clear there’s performance to unlock and those are the kind of steps we can focus on overnight. The long-run pace looked strong in the conditions we’ve seen today, which is encouraging. Tyre management is going to be important this weekend, and that is something we will continue to keep on top of throughout the weekend.
We’ve got a good foundation to build on and, with a few tweaks, I’m confident we can take a step forward and put ourselves in the mix for qualifying.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
In recent years, we've failed to get the car in a good position on this track. After a lot of preparation for the past few months, it was interesting to see how the W17 was behaving today. Aside from a few tricky corners and a tendency to run the rear tyres hot, the altitude adds additional challenges to the power unit and cooling system.
Our morning session was packed with test items. We managed to make good progress and were able to complete most of the usual race weekend work. We identified a few balance issues which we worked on into the afternoon session.
The track was slightly cooler in the afternoon, and Kimi finished the day on a positive note although both were able to do solid long runs. George didn't quite get the single lap together in the afternoon but that wasn't a concern in the morning. We've got plenty of data to work with overnight to put that back in a good place.
It looks quite close with the competition in terms of single lap and long run and it's hard to say exactly where we sit but compared to the last few seasons here, it seems to be a good improvement and we'll do our usual overnight work searching for that bit more pace.
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