Austrian Grand Prix: Practice Recap

Japan’s Ryō Hirakawa stepped up for his first FP1 outing of the season with TGR Haas F1 Team – Esteban Ocon stepping aside for the session to enable Hirakawa to pilot the VF-26 for the first time, having previously driven its two predecessors at race weekends and TPC events. 

Bearman and Hirakawa both began opening practice on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium compound, setting times of 1:10.073 and 1:11.927, respectively. Their fastest laps came on softs, Bearman reaching the top-10 with a 1:09.071, and Hirakawa posting a time of 1:10.493 for P19. The session was cut short when the Cadillac of Sergio Perez stopped on track at Turn 3, bringing out a red flag with only one minute remaining of the session.

Conditions for FP2 continued to heat up with ambient temperatures reaching 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) – second practice commencing late afternoon at 17:00 local. Esteban returned to steering duties and sampled both hard and soft compounds over the course of the hour-long outing. The Frenchman produced a quick lap of 1:08.830 on softs to claim P15 on the timesheet before a distance run back on hards through to the checkered. Bearman added another 33 laps in the afternoon – the Brit recording a fastest tour of 1:08.532 on softs – to place P13, also switching back to the hard compound for a high-fuel run to close out his day.

TGR Haas F1 Team ran a total of 115 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 59 by Bearman, 33 from Ocon and 23 from Hirakawa.

Ryō Hirakawa:

“It was my first time in the VF-26 today, so a big thank you to TGR Haas F1 Team and TOYOTA GAZOO Racing for the opportunity. It was a hectic session and we were busy working through quite a few tests, but everything went well. I couldn't really do a proper lap though because we were limited by time, but there was some good feedback between me and the team, which they can take into the rest of the weekend.”

Ollie Bearman: 

“It’s been a positive day overall. I’ve been happy with the progress, honestly, and the car has also been good. We had a few things to focus on after Barcelona, and I think the car is in a good window right now. The gaps are tight like normal, so we need to make a step for tomorrow, but as far as Fridays go, I’m pretty happy.”

Esteban Ocon:

“I jumped in the car after Ryō was in for FP1, so there was a lot to take on board, but there seems to be a lot less degradation than in Barcelona, which is quite positive, even with the heat. We've got a clear direction of where we want to go tomorrow and what we need to improve, so we'll try to do that. It's too early to see where we'll stand, but we'll try and do the best we can.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“We had Ryō in the car for FP1, and we had a very different program, focusing on test items, considering what’s been happening the last few races. That was really important, so in terms of lap times, I wouldn’t read anything into that because, honestly, our program was very different and we weren’t focused on one-lap performance. On Ollie’s side, I’d say that was one of the best starts to a weekend we’ve had in quite a few races, which is really good. We’ve been saying we need to start the weekend on the front foot, getting our set-up in the ballpark, and build up from there, and I feel overall today we’ve done that. In FP2, it was far from perfect, and we need to find performance, but today I felt our operations were good, our cars started from a good place, and we were chipping away at it. We still have performance to find on both low- and high-fuel, but I think it was a good Friday and a good reaction from the last few races.”