First Free Practice Results 2021 Austrian F1 GP

Event: Austrian F1 Grand Prix
Track: Red Bull Ring

Carlos Sainz driving the Ferrari SF21 on the Red Bull Ring

Weather: dry  18.3°C
Tarmac: dry  30.8°C
Humidity : 50.8%
Wind : 0.1 m/s SE
Pressure: 938.8 bar

This first practice for the 2021 Austrian Formula 1 Grand Prix three race drivers had to sit out the session. Alpine driver Fernando Alonso, Alfa Romeo driver Antonio Giovinazzi and Williams driver George Russell sat out the session. The car they usually drive was occupied by F2 drivers Guanyu Zhou, Callum Illot and Roy NIssany to show their skills this hour.

The difference between this GP and last week's GP are the softer tyre compounds. The soft, medium and hard tyres are 1 compound softer. The hardest tyre of this week was the medium tyre of last week and so on. The soft tyre is the C5 tyre, which is the softest tyre available this season. This will show quite a different race, because teams probably have to do a lot more pitstops under dry weather circumstances. Nevertheless the race this Sunday is again predicted to be a wet race, just like last weekend.

This session the teams also could test out new prototype Pirelli tyres, which will be used during next Grand Prix weekend during the British F1 GP in two weeks time.

Halfway the session the drivers who occupied the top 5 on the quickest lap leaderboard were: 1. Verstappen (Red Bull) 1:05.558, 2. Gasly (AlphaTauri) +0.182s, 3. Hamilton (Mercedes +0.334s, 4. Sainz (Ferrari +0.416s and 5. Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) +0.441s. Verstappen did not use the medium tyres up til then.

Lance Stroll was having though day at the office this morning. The Canadian driver spun the Aston Martin twice during this practice session. Kimi Raikkonen was pushing out some good laps and even was 6th for quite a while in the Alfa Romeo.

With 10 minutes to go the top 5 was changed quite a lot because more drivers tried out the softest tyre compound. Verstappen was still quickest and improved his time to 1:05.143. 2nd was Ferrari Leclerc (+0.266s), 3rd Sainz (+0.288s), 4th Bottas (Mercedes) +0.302s and 5th Tsunoda (+0.331s). Leclerc and Tsunoda had clocked their quickest lap time on the prototype tyre, while the others drove their time on the soft tyres.

Hamilton was struggling to get into the top 5. The defending champion complained to his Mercedes team, he was having trouble to get enough heat in the tyres to make them work. The temperatures are also a lot lower than last weekend, when it was 5-10°C warmer around the Red Bull Ring.

Chinese driver Zhou was the quickest of the three F2 drivers who drove this first practice.

The quickest lap time of last year's FP1 in Austria was 1:04,816 min, driven by Lewis Hamilton with the Mercedes W11

FP1 Times Table 2021 Austrian GP

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