“Cautious” was Ferrari’s reaction of choice after a reasonable day of practice at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Charles Leclerc would top a disrupted second session in Spielberg following crashes for Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas, this after Sebastian Vettel had split the two Mercedes’ in the morning.
Lewis Hamilton has already made his prediction of the Italian team being level if not fastest, but with events making a pecking order hard to establish, Vettel is not getting carried away.
“In practice, it always looks a bit stronger for us than qualifying and the race so we need to be cautious,” he said.
“We are still trying a lot of things to try and get closer. Hopefully tomorrow we can get a good feel and do better than today.”
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Leclerc added: “I think they [Mercedes] are still very, very quick, so it’s going to be very difficult when they put everything together.
“Today the car felt good on our side, so I’m pretty happy. The wind and the conditions, in general, were quite difficult but I think we made the best out of it, and hopefully, we will do the same tomorrow.”
With both Mercedes and Red Bull watching one car bin it into the barriers in the afternoon, Ferrari were lucky not to join them as Vettel suffered a high-speed slide at the final corner but would emerge unscathed.
“Not so much,” the German said of any impact. “Unfortunately we couldn’t get the run on the softs, the long run, but apart from that, no further impact, the car was fine.”
