SPIELBERG, Austria — Report by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman — Charles Coates/Getty Images Europe photo —
Mercedes, meet Ferrari.
This weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg looks set to be the most competitive race of the 2015 Formula One World Championship to date, after Sebastian Vettel took the fight to the Silver Arrows and lead the overall practice charts on Friday.
Vettel’s best lap of 1:09.600 on the Pirelli super-soft tires was enough to top all comers and give Scuderia Ferrari hope of claiming their second win of the year on Sunday afternoon, despite a suspected problem with his gearbox in the second practice session and a drivetrain issue in the opening session.
“Unfortunately we didn’t get as many laps as we wanted, but that [is] what it is,” Vettel said. “Overall the pace looks fine, we’ve taken a lot of information from [the second] session, which is good. We know that we have a good car and we think we are competitive, let’s see what’s happening overnight. We have to make sure that we stay with Mercedes as much as we can.”
“[In terms of what happened with the gearbox], one of the sensors went to the alert mode and we had to slow down,” the German added. “Obviously now we’ll have to take a close look at it — we don’t know what’s the problem yet — but it seems to be unrelated to the one we had this morning. It’s always better if it happens in free practice rather than in qualifying or in the race, but we have to look into it and make sure it’s not happening again.”
Behind Vettel, Mercedes was able to claim one of the podium spots on the Friday time sheets, as Nico Rosberg posted a lap of 1:09.611 on the supersofts to end the day second overall. The second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen ended the day third with a clip of 1:09.860.
Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado shocked the grid with an impressive run to go fourth-quick with a lap of 1:09.914, just three-tenths of a second off the overall pace, and defending champion Lewis Hamilton (1:10.137) rounded out the fast five in the second Mercedes.
The Briton was one of several who struggled on the super-soft tires during the second practice.
“It´s a challenge to nail the setup for this track — but I felt comfortable in the car,” Hamilton said. “The [Ferraris] are very strong here. They had very impressive pace — on higher fuel levels as well as low. They are our closest rivals … but on this short track the lap times are quicker and all the cars are closer together. We will definitely need to work hard to find a few tenths for tomorrow [though].”
Le Mans winner Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez were sixth and tenth, respectively, for Force India — with Romain Grosjean, Max Verstappen and Felipe Nasr between them, seventh through ninth. The entirety of the top ten were separated by less than a second in FP2.
The Mercedes pair of Rosberg(1:10.401) and Hamilton (1:10.709) led the opening session, with Raikkonen, Valtteri Bottas and Nasr rounding out the top five.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said following Friday’s two practices that the picture is exactly what fans and teams should expect on Sunday — close competition and the potential of a non-Mercedes winner.
“We saw today the picture we had expected after Canada — the competition is close on this kind of circuit and we have a battle on our hands,” Wolff said. “On a circuit with the shortest lap time of the year, of course the gaps are smaller than elsewhere, and this makes it important to get every detail right. It is tricky to string together a mistake-free lap, especially in the cool conditions with the tires at the bottom of their working temperature range, but we ran reliably in both sessions and completed our program, so we have lots to think about tonight.”
“I think we can expect a close-fought weekend and a nice battle on this great circuit.”
