Image courtesy of Scuderia Ferrari
Sebastian Vettel set the pace in the second practice session in Austria with a 1:09.600 ahead of Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen.
Despite fears that rain would affect the running, the session remained dry throughout.
After the early prime tyre runs, it was Hamilton who led the Ferrari’s by 0.16 seconds.
When the drivers put on the Super Soft tyres, almost everyone was making errors. Most incidents happening at turns 1, 8 and 9 with drivers going wide onto the tarmac run off area’s, but ruining their laps.
Kimi improved by 0.4 seconds when changing onto the Super Soft tyre. Sebastian by 0.6 seconds and Nico Rosberg by 0.7 seconds.
Lewis Hamilton struggled to get his Mercedes around the Red Bull Ring with a clean lap and didn’t improve on the option tyre. Rosberg meanwhile was just 0.011s of the benchmark set by Vettel. Lewis’ prime time still good enough for 5th place.
It was a similar situation at Lotus. Maldonado able to set the time on the SS tyre, impressively just 0.3s from the lead, but Grosjean didn’t get a clean lap in.
Vettel’s session wasn’t all successful as gearbox problem’s hit the Ferrari SF-15T with 25 minutes of the session left.
