
Defending world champions Mercedes come back to the top of the timesheet at the Red Bull Ring for Australian Grand Prix. Title contender Lewis Hamilton made the best lap-time with a 1m04.523s and his teammate Valtteri Bottas set second quickest, 0.189s behind the leading time. While last Sunday’s race winner and morning practice session pace-setter Max Verstappen was 0.217s behind in P3 for Red Bull; who is leading the drivers’ championship ahead of Hamilton.
Hamilton barely escaped from a crash in the final segments of the second practice session, who made gravel trip at rain hits Turn 4.
Mercedes made some small progression today – Hamilton
“They definitely have something extra in their bag,” Hamilton told to Sky Sports’ about Red Bull.
“I think we made some small progression today. I think they still have the two-tenths lead, or maybe a tenth and a half. We made steps, but not enough to make up that two-tenths deficit.”
“I asked my guys, I don’t understand where they get it from, but it’s impressive and we’ve got to work hard to try and see if we can match them somehow.”
“It’s been a bit of a struggle in FP1 was a bit of a struggle because I just was trying different variants of the car and the car was unhappy. So then I had to make some more changes back to similar to what I had last week or with some other adjustments and felt much better,” The Brit said.
“So, I’m generally happy with where the car is, I’m probably not going to change too much, because most often if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it most often. Most of the time, [if] you always try to eke out more, it gets worse. So it’ll be the tiniest of tweaks.”
Toto Wolff tells Sky F1 after the session that Mercedes are “carefully optimistic” they have made improvements around the Red Bull Ring since last week, saying they “improved in some of the corner sequences, so it’s encouraging”.
Mercedes has become stronger – Verstappen
“Mercedes seems very fast on the soft tyre,” Verstappen told his own official F1 website.
“There are no real issues, so we just need to make sure we find some more speed on the softs, because I think we are looking good on the mediums and also in the long runs it is looking good, and that is the most important thing in the end,” the Dutchman clarified.
“It will be exciting, Mercedes has become stronger, we will see during qualifying tomorrow. The most important thing is to make sure the softer compounds hold up during the race, that will be a challenge,” Verstappen concludes.
Mercedes-powered Aston Martin duo Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel made fourth and fifth respectively. AlphaTauri’s ace Yuki Tsunoda set sixth fastest ahead his team-mate Pierre Gasly.
Fernando Alonso blocked by Kimi Raikkonen on a his fastest lap, finished eighth ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi, who rounded out the top 10 in the Austrian Grand Prix second practice.