{"id":5122,"date":"2018-06-29T10:55:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T14:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=5122"},"modified":"2018-06-29T10:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T14:55:46","slug":"austrian-gp-friday-free-practice-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2018\/06\/29\/austrian-gp-friday-free-practice-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Austrian GP &#8211; Friday Free Practice Results"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2018\/06\/29\/austrian-gp-history-stats-circuit-guide\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Austrian Grand Prix<\/strong><\/a> weekend started with <strong>Mercedes<\/strong> at the front in the first two practice sessions on Friday. <strong>Lewis Hamilton<\/strong> enjoyed great pace in his car and was able to be the fastest driver in both sessions. His Mercedes teammate, <strong>Valtteri Bottas<\/strong>, followed the English driver in second place.<\/p>\n<h1>Friday Free Practice Results<\/h1>\n<p><strong>Scuderia Ferrari<\/strong>\u00a0and <strong>Red Bull Racing<\/strong> managed to line up behind Mercedes: Ferrari in FP2 with <strong>Sebastian Vettel<\/strong>, and Red Bull with <strong>Max Verstappen<\/strong> in FP1. Vettel&#8217;s time in FP2 was 0.236 seconds slower, while Verstappen was 0.233 off Mercedes&#8217; pace in FP1.<\/p>\n<p>Mercedes is the team to beat at the <strong>Red Bull Ring<\/strong> in <strong>Austria<\/strong> for the fifth straight year. The Silver Arrows won the last four races with three different drivers (<strong>Nico Rosberg<\/strong> in 2014 and 2015, Hamilton in 2016, and Bottas in 2017).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The main takeaways from\u00a0both sessions were:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hamilton&#8217;s fastest lap in FP2 was set with the soft tires, while Bottas used the supersoft in his flying laps.<\/li>\n<li><b>Scuderia Toro Rosso<\/b>&#8216;s<b>\u00a0Pierre Gasly <\/b>had a broken suspension in FP2, and the session was red-flagged halfway through. The Frenchman was able to return to the track at the end of the practice session.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Haas F1 <\/strong>was, once again, the fourth best team.<strong> Romain Grosjean <\/strong>and<strong> Kevin Magnussen<\/strong> lined up seventh and eighth.<\/li>\n<li>The rain was a definite threat in FP1 and FP2, but it did not make its presence felt during track action.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ferrari<\/strong>&#8216;s<strong> Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen<\/strong> had a quiet start to the weekend, with sixth place in FP1 (9 tenths off the leader&#8217;s pace) and sixth in FP2, with a six-tenth\u00a0gap to Hamilton.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>Conclusions<\/h1>\n<div class=\"td-g-rec td-g-rec-id-content_inlineright\"><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"><ins id=\"aswift_1_expand\"><ins id=\"aswift_1_anchor\"><\/ins><\/ins><\/ins>Mercedes in FP1 and Ferrari in FP2 showed its race pace. Hamilton was consistently in the 1:08.200s and had a 1:07.500s laptime in FP2, while Vettel was pretty close in lap times. Bottas was fast in the long runs, with consistent laps between 1:07.600s and 1:07.900s. Red Bull Racing drivers were not particularly fast in the long runs.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #111111; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 27px;\">Results of FP1:<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">FP1 CLASSIFICATION: A perfect start for Mercedes ? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AustrianGP?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#AustrianGP<\/a> ?? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/F1?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#F1<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rwGaj9IqLB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/rwGaj9IqLB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Formula 1 (@F1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/F1\/status\/1012645612649672704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 29, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Results of FP2:<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Two in a row for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LewisHamilton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@LewisHamilton<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ValtteriBottas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@ValtteriBottas<\/a> in Spielberg<\/p>\n<p>But Ferrari and Red Bull aren&#8217;t far behind&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AustrianGP?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#AustrianGP<\/a> ?? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/F1?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#F1<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yEZewKpO5f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/yEZewKpO5f<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Formula 1 (@F1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/F1\/status\/1012706186724954114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 29, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>MAIN PHOTO:<\/strong><br \/>\n<a id=\"OyiVGfqBS9NdqpjchdUELQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.in\/detail\/987082846\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'OyiVGfqBS9NdqpjchdUELQ',sig:'wvOfM675QNx5diDSTeosW5IyGC4o776NhOJMIFp3fAU=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'987082846',caption: true ,tld:'in',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Austrian Grand Prix weekend started with Mercedes at the front in the first two practice sessions on Friday. Lewis Hamilton enjoyed great pace in his car and was able to be the fastest driver in both sessions. His Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, followed the English driver in second place. Friday Free Practice Results Scuderia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2449,"featured_media":5135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[424,619,68,76,121],"class_list":["post-5122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","tag-2018-formula-one-season","tag-austrian-grand-prix","tag-f1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-mercedes"],"modified_by":"Sudha Sundar","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}