Nico Rosberg was fastest throughout Friday as he set the quickest lap time in second practice. But the grid only got around half an hour of dry running before the first wave of the predicted rain for this weekend hit the track.
Rosberg got out early to take the fastest lap of a 1m07.967s. After the heavy rainfall, the track managed to dry out comprehensively, allowing Lewis Hamilton to jump from fifth to second, just 0.019 seconds off of his teammate’s time. Sebastian Vettel was, once again, six-tenths off the time of his fellow countryman, only just getting ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in fifth who was five thousandths slower than Vettel.
Kimi Räikkönen was the first driver to fall off the track. Just before the rain fell the Finn picked up some under steer and ending up in the gravel at Turn 6. He took to the run off road and got his car, slowly, back onto the track with no further issues.
But that was when the rain began to fall forcefully and sent all of the drivers back into the pits. Drivers were spinning off all over the track as the wet weather played havoc with the slick tyres. However, everyone managed to cautiously get back to the pits with no damage to any cars. The track action was then put on hold whilst the rain created a lake on the newly resurfaced Red Bull Ring.
Just over 35 minutes of the session left the track dried out enough for the cars to get back on track. Within ten minutes a dry line was forming and the slick tyres were fitted to the cars for some last minute improvements. Nico Hulkenberg leapt up to third on the drying track, demoting Vettel and Ricciardo down a place.
Carlos Sainz Jr improved to finish the session sixth, the same place he finished the first practice session in, ahead of Max Verstappen, Kimi Räikkönen, Valtteri Bottas and Jenson Button. All of the bottom five in the top ten managed to improve on their lap times after the rain. Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa fell out of the top 10, eleventh and twelfth respectively, with Alonso under a tenth of a second off the P10 time of his teammate.
Vettel’s day ended in the gravel as his Ferrari’s rear snapped out coming towards Turn 2. He spun around and ended up beached with his engine cutting out. This was not a great end to a day that already has seen Vettel pick up a five-place grid penalty for changing his gearbox out of sequence.
The two Manor drivers escaped with reprimands only for their infringements during Free Practice One. Pascal Wehrlein was reprimanded for speeding during the Virtual Safety Car whilst his teammate’s was for rejoining the track unsafely when he span off at Turn 9 and nearly had Ricciardo drive into him as he retook to the track. Wehrlein beat his teammate with an impressive P17 finish in second practice whilst Rio Haryanto was slowest with a time of 1m11.328s.
After Friday’s running is complete, it is advantage Rosberg as the teams look ahead to setting up for qualifying. Lewis Hamilton neglected to do any wet weather running in today’s session, which could become costly come race day, where the weather predictions are very similar.
