2019 Austrian Grand Prix – Friday

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport experienced a disrupted opening day of free practice in Spielberg, completing the afternoon session in P2 (Valtteri) and P4 (Lewis).

• Both drivers ran the Soft compound tyre through Free Practice One, analysing cooling levels and completing set-up work.
• For FP1, Valtteri had to swap back to PU1 after an oil leak was discovered on PU2; he then swapped back to PU2 for second practice after the problem was resolved.
• In second practice, Valtteri suffered a 23G impact at Turn 6 on his Soft tyre run and did not take further part in the session. He nonetheless finished P2 on the Medium tyre.
• Lewis completed a busy 43 laps in FP2, including long runs on the Soft and Hard compounds; he did not complete a flying lap on low fuel with the Soft, so his best time was set on the Hard.

Valtteri Bottas

It was pretty big hit for me in second practice but I’m all okay with no pain. There were some gusts out there this afternoon and I think I managed to find one of them – the corners here are very tricky and very penalising if you make even a small error. But I must say I prefer this kind of circuit which penalises mistakes – it’s how I like it and it makes it even more exciting. Before the shunt, I had an issue with the engine this morning which meant we swapped to the old one for FP1. That compromised me a little bit but we found a clear direction on car set-up. We made some pretty big changes for FP2 and it felt a lot better until the accident. So overall, a good feeling on the car performance but other teams are quick as well. It’s going to be very hot this weekend, especially on Sunday, and will put the cars to the limit in terms of cooling the brakes and the engine. I think it’s going to be very close on the time sheets and it should be fun in qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton

It was a clean day for me with no major issues, although I broke a couple of front wings on the kerbs like a lot of other drivers. We are flat out for a large portion of the lap this year – even corners like Turns 6 and 7, Turn 9 and the last corner are seriously quick in these cars – and we have been tickling the set-up all day to improve it. Ferrari and Red Bull look quick, particularly Ferrari, and it will be interesting to see how it pans out tomorrow. This is one of those circuits where the times are always very, very close and small margins make the difference; that’