Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc topped the timesheet in a second practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix in which both Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas crashed.
The timesheet at the end of the 90-minute session was mixed up on account of two red flags which served to interrupt the qualifying simulation runs.
The first was triggered when Verstappen lost the rear of his car at the apex of the final corner on his last medium tyre effort. He backed his Red Bull into the wall, severely damaging his suspension and halving his rear wing.
When the session resumed and the majority left the garages on the soft compound tyre, Bottas suffered a huge snap of oversteer at the long left-hander Turn 6. He caught the slide but was already bouncing across the gravel and hit the wall head on.
Both Verstappen and Bottas were unscathed in the incidents. Strong gusty winds were attributed as a factor in the incidents.
With drivers emerging for one last qualifying simulation attempt following Bottas’ incident, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel then suffered his own dramatic excursion after having posted the fastest sector one time.
Vettel lost control on the entry to Turn 10, sliding off track and stopping just meters short of the barrier on the outside.
Leclerc, who was just behind Vettel when he spun, was able to complete his lap and recorded a 1m05.086s to eclipse Bottas’ previous session best benchmark by 0.331s.
Despite sitting out the second half of the session, Bottas still ended up second on the timesheet, with Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly jumping up to third place with his soft tyre run.
Opening practice pacesetter Lewis Hamilton finished the afternoon in fourth place, with his early run on the hard compound tyre yielding his fastest lap.
Hamilton was on course to eclipse Bottas’ time before the Finn slid off the circuit and into the wall.
McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr was the best of the rest once again, lapping just 0.459s slower than Leclerc’s pacesetting effort. A snap of oversteer during his race pace evaluation led to him bouncing across the gravel at Turn 6 late on.
Like Sainz, both Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen managed to record a qualifying simulation effort, ending the day in sixth and seventh for Haas and Alfa Romeo.
Having failed to record a representative soft tyre run, Vettel finished eighth ahead of Verstappen in ninth.
Matching his FP1 result, Lando Norris rounded out the top 10 albeit over 0.4s adrift of his team-mate Sainz. He missed his opening soft tyre run after outbraking himself at Turn 1.
