Formula 1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheet ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in opening practice ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull Ring posed its typical challenges in the first session of the weekend, with drivers exploring run-off areas and parts being damaged on the circuit’s unforgiving sausage kerbs.
Pacesetter Hamilton was not exempt, struggling with understeer early in the session and having to back out of his first soft tyre run after running wide and over the kerbs at Turn 4.
Hamilton later improved to take top spot on the times with a 1m04.838s benchmark, but damaged the left-side end-fence on his front wing later in the run after striking a kerb.
Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly chipped part of his front wing on the Turn 10 sausages in the opening 10 minutes of practice, and Lance Stroll lost a winglet from his Racing Point on the Turn 4 kerbs.
But Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg picked up the most significant damage, forcing the session to end with a red flag after a run across the Turn 10 rumble strips tore his front wing in half to litter the final corner with debris.
Ferrari spent part of the session evaluating the performance of its own front wing package, with Vettel also having his floor changed mid-way through FP1.
He suffered an excursion at Turn 1 on the first lap of a medium tyre run, before posting a time just 0.144s adrift of Hamilton’s soft tyre benchmark to seal second.
Valtteri Bottas suffered a delayed start to his weekend, after Mercedes had to revert to powerunit one on his car, after an oil leak was uncovered on his latest spec powerunit.
He still managed 10 laps in the first 40 minutes of the session and ended up third on the timesheet ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Gasly finished fifth and sixth. Team boss Christian Horner suggested that the team suffered in excess of £200,000 worth of damage from kerbs during the session.
Carlos Sainz Jr was best of the rest for McLaren in seventh, beating Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo who ended up eighth despite a noticeable oscillation on the top flap of his rear wing when the DRS was open.
Kevin Magnussen was ninth and Lando Norris rounded out the top 10.
