by 15:23
Current ranking of constructors
Haas had his best race weekend with a fourth and fifth a few years ago. Can you deliver this weekend? They haven’t been meeting his top pace, but they finished with double points at Silverstone last weekend.
15:16
Current Championship Ranking: Top 10
15:14
The scenery is not so bad here.
15:05
Classification of the first practice
14:20
Good afternoon F1 fans
Welcome to our live coverage to qualify for the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix. In case you forgot, this weekend is one of three road racing weekends, where the format is a bit different from the usual Formula One race weekends. Instead of the lineup of three practice sessions followed by qualifying and then the race, it’s one practice session, qualifying for the sprint race on Saturday, another practice session , the speed race and then the grand prix on Sunday.
It certainly gives a different feel to the weekend, but is it better? I think F1 has done well, with maybe three, four or five sprint race weekends feeling good. Certainly this is a track where you can overtake, so it has always seemed like a good idea to do it here. It usually makes the order a bit less predictable with a higher chance of a mixed grill on Sunday. It certainly seemed to help Daniel Ricciardo’s win at Monza last year.
So far we’ve only had an hour of practice, but the order of the session was perhaps what we expected, at least at the top. Championship leader Max Verstappen topped the timesheets with a lap of 1m06.302s. Ominously, however, he also completed more laps than anyone else at 34, and appeared to run some race simulations towards the end of the session.
Behind Verstappen was Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (0.255s behind) and then George Russell’s leading Mercedes, four tenths behind. As much as we had some great racing and a close and exciting finish up front at Silverstone last weekend, we didn’t see Verstappen’s true potential due to the bodywork damage he sustained early in the race. There was the danger, and the probability, that she had run off with him. And that, again, is the danger this weekend at a track where he excels.
The championship is in desperate need of a Ferrari comeback and it got that to some extent at Silverstone last weekend (with Mercedes back in the mix). It would be a shame if Verstappen ran away with him this weekend. However, there is at least some chance of danger all over the field with the format. That can save us.
