Max fastest after FP1 in Austria

Published on 30 June 2023 by Florence Cobben

Max Verstappen finished fastest in the Austrian Grand Prix's first and only free practice. In sunny Spielberg, the Dutchman was around two-tenths faster on medium tyres than Carlos Sainz on soft tyres. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton snatched third and fourth place, both also driving on softs. Sergio Pérez rounded out the top five on medium tyres.

The Orange Army enjoy sunny temperatures of 27 degrees in Spielberg, and the track temperatures hover at 46 degrees. Max sets his first time at 1:08.094 on hard tyres. Pérez and Max trade positions for first a number of times, but after the first ten minutes, Fernando Alonso manages to set the fastest time on medium tyres: 1:06.656. Hamilton follows Alonso’s lead and drives into second place, ahead of both Red Bulls, eight-hundredths after the Spaniard.

Max takes back the lead with a lap time of 1:06.598, again on the hard tyre. The Dutchman then drives into the pits, reporting that something is hanging loose on his rear wing. While the problem is being addressed, Hamilton sets the fastest time on hards. He is almost two-tenths quicker than P2. Halfway through FP1 the timesheet boasts a top five of: Hamilton, Verstappen, Alonso, Pérez and Alex Albon. The drivers at Ferrari have not yet managed to set a fast time - both are in the seventeenth and eighteenth positions.

Back out of the pits, Max lets his team know that his front tyres have poor grip, and his RB19 is suffering from understeer. In the last leg of FP1, more and more drivers adopt soft tyres to propel themselves forward on the track and upward in the timesheets. Lance Stroll manages to drive his car into second place, more than a tenth behind Hamilton. Leclerc makes a comeback and has a short stint in the leadership position, but Max is faster on the medium tyres and tops the timesheets with a lap time of 1:06.084. Moments later, Sainz demotes Max to second place. The Spaniard is two-tenths faster on the soft tyres. Although the Ferraris are setting increasingly faster times, they eventually give way to Max, who manages to clinch the fastest time on the medium tyres in the final minutes of free practice.

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Results first free practice Austria: