Styrian GP : Post-Friday practice reaction from Lewis and Valtteri

After a seven year of pure domination in the hybrid turbo era Mercedes were put under huge pressure by championship leaders Red Bull and Max Verstappen in the 2021 season so far.

Mercedes will be happy to stop their winless slide to just three races with a win at Styrian GP. But at the conclusion of Friday practice sessions, it seems the regaining champions have some work to do before Saturday’s important qualifying session.

Lewis finished the first session of the day third quickest with a fast lap of 1:06.332, which is +0.422s shy of session leader Verstappen’s time. The Brit managed to complete 32 laps.

Valtteri finished morning session just behind his teammate in P4 with a fast lap of 1:06.386, 0.056 seconds shy of his teammate. The Fin managed to complete 34 laps.

In the Afternoon session, Lewis come home in P4 with 1:05.796 lap, after having the quickest time of the session deleted for a track limit violation. The seven-time World champion completed 35 laps.

Valtteri Bottas struggled in the afternoon session, his fastest time 1:06.251 was good enough for P12 in the final standings. The Fin was handed three place grid drop penalty and two point penalty on his super license for spinning in the pit lane during FP2.

But Mercedes says Bottas encountered traffic on his fastest lap – and he focused primarily on long runs on the soft and hard tyres rather than going for a glory one lap pace.

Lewis Hamilton

“Overall, a work in progress – it’s been a beautiful day, a few drops of rain at the start of the second session but the track is awesome. We’re a little bit down, particularly over a single lap, but generally the car felt relatively solid.

I’m happy with where we’ve got the car to, I’ve been working hard all week trying to figure out where I want the car and I hope the hard work starts paying off soon. Red Bull are throwing some good punches at the moment so we’ve just got to have our guard up and make sure we’re ready for the return.”

Valtteri Bottas

“FP1 felt overall a bit better but in FP2, we had just one run with lower fuel and that was a little messy so the lap time on the board was nothing amazing. But the focus for today was on the long runs, trying to find the long run performance – we prioritised that well today and hopefully that will pay off on Sunday. Lewis and I were running quite different set-ups so we have lots to analyse tonight to find the best bits to take into qualifying and the race.”

Andrew Shovlin

“It’s been a productive day for us and a lot drier than we’d expected from the forecast. The drivers were fairly happy with the car throughout the day; the first session was odd as we looked off the pace but the balance of the car wasn’t far off where we expected it to be.

There were a few tweaks to the setup going into the afternoon and encouragingly, our pace looked a bit better both on single lap and long run, although it could have been a mixture of conditions coming towards us and improving the car. It’s a tricky circuit to set the car up for as the track warp in the slow speed corners makes it difficult to find a consistent balance and on such a short lap, any mistake can be very costly. H

owever, we’ve got some good direction from today and can no doubt make further steps forward. The forecast remains unsettled so there’s every chance we’ll still get some wet running.”

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