A ‘misleading’ picture at the top 

Formula 1 championship leader Max Verstappen topped the timesheets on Friday at the Styrian Grand Prix, but that doesn’t necessarily tell the ♍full story heading into qualifying. 

Verstappen ended the day with a seemingly comforta⛄ble 0.336s buffer over the rest of the field after title rival Lewis Hamilton saw his best time deleted due to a track limits breach. 

Hamilton had set the fastest lap of the session by 0.077s frﷺom Verstappen during the qualifying simulations on the soft tyres, suggesting there is plenty of one-lap potential in the Mercedes. 

But running beyond the extremities of the track at Turn 10 meant Hamilton lost his time🍎, putting Verstappen back at the top of the leaderboard. 

“Lewis was faster but his lap time got deleted so looks a bit differe♊nt from﷽ what I think is shown at the moment,” said Verstappen. 

“If that’s possible already in FP2 I’m sure t༺owards qualifying, well we have to see and wait what the weather will do, but overall yeah I think it will be again very tight.”

Both their teammates ended up down the order, with Sergio Perez understood to be running a lower engine mode as he finished ninth, while Valtteri Bottas wa🦩s only 12th after a bizarre pitlane spin saw him hit with a costly three-place grid drop for Sunday.

It is unclear how much more pace there is to come from both the Mercedes and Red Bull, but we look poised for another thrilling Saturday and a▨ titanic scrap for pole position. 

The field is incredibly close 

The short nat🍌ure of the Spielberg circuit ofte❀n leads to the field converging, and that was certainly the case on Friday in Austria. 

Less than nine-tenths of a second covered the top-14 drivers in FP2, with the top 10 f꧙eaturing six different teams. 

The midfield fight in 2021 has been a hotly contested affair so far and that looks set to continue this🗹 weekend. 

Drivers will need to extract the absolute maximum out of their cars in qualifying to get the most out of their weekend, with fi꧟ne margins likely to determine wh♉o makes it into Q3, as well as the battle for pole. 

We saw a glimpse ♏of just how costly mistakes can be on Friday as a number of drivers spun when pushing the boundaries of the circuit, while there were track limits breaches aplenty across the combined two hours’ of running. 

McLaren, Alpine impress as Ferrari struggle 

McLaren and Alpine caught the eye in FP2 as Daniel Ricciardo an🐻d Esteban Ocon equally impressed o🧸n their way to second and third respectively. 

Ricciardo jokingly credited a diet of three schnitzels as he lifted his McLaren up to P2 in the timing sheets, ending ꦦan encouraging day for himself and the Woking squad just three-tenths off the pace. 

Both McLaren drivers felt their low fuel pace was good, leaving them opt🐭imistic about their qualifying prospects. 

Alpine also looked competitive on the qualifying simulation runs, with Ocon outpacing Hamilton and teammate Fernando Alonso, who capped off a strong day by rounding out the top five, within half a seco🌳nd of Verstappen’s benchma🍸rk. 

It was a trickier day for Ferrari, with both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finishing outside of the top-10 in the afternoon af💯ter only Leclerc had featured in the topꦕ half of the timesheets in FP1. 

Leclerc finish🐠ed 11th, while Sainz was for🎐tunate not to beach his car in the gravel after a spin at Turn 5 early in the session. 

Both drivers♔ struggled for pace on the low-fuel runs, leaving Ferrari with plenty of work to do to get in a better place for qualifying day. 

Setback for Gasly after positive start 

Pierre Gasly starred on Friday morning as he set the second-fastest timﷺe behind Verstappen in FP1, but his promising start to 𝓀the weekend was quickly dampened when he was ruled out of FP2. 

Honda spotted irregularities on the data of Gasly’s power unit following lengthy checks post-FP1, forcing🦄 him to watch the afternoon session from the pitwall.. 

It puts the Frenchman on the backfoot heading into the rest of the weekend given he lost a full hour of val๊uable track time. However, Gasly remai✅ns confident about AlphaTauri’s potential in Austria. 

“It’s not ideal, it’s a big shame but hopefully it doesn’t impact us too much for t♎he rest of the weekend,” he said. 

“This morning was great, so I was really confident and there were a couple ofღ things I wanted to try this afternoon. There are some question-marks but hopefully we can go into qualifying confident.” 

Eyes on the skies 

Rain was expected to hit the Red Bull Ring on Friday with forecasts predicting an 80% percent chance of rain, though F1 ultimately evaded the precipita🃏tion aside from some light drops at the start of F🌳P2. 

A deluge hit the track la𓂃ter in time for the Porsche Supercup runningꦐ and with thunderstorms set to be in the area overnight, a likelihood of rain affecting proceedings on Saturday remains. 

With scattered showers forecast for Saturday and the prospect of thunderstorms on Sunday, all eyes will be firmly fixed on the skie🌼s as the weather looks set to play 💟its part this weekend.