Ferrari Completes Productive Friday Practice at Austrian Grand Prix
Scuderia Ferrari HP gathered valuable data across two practice sessions at Spielberg, with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc setting competitive lap times.
- 119
- 1'07"611
- 1'07"855
What Happened
Scuderia Ferrari HP completed its planned programme during Friday practice for the Austrian Grand Prix at the Spielberg circuit, gathering useful data in both qualifying and race trim. Across the two sessions, the team focused primarily on fine-tuning the setup of the SF-26, evaluating the performance of the Medium and Soft compounds, all without any significant issues. In FP1, Lewis Hamilton and Dino Beganovic were on track, with Beganovic making his second consecutive appearance. In FP2, Charles Leclerc joined Hamilton, and the team completed a total of 119 laps over the day.
“I’d say it was a solid but challenging start to the weekend, with the high temperatures making an already demanding circuit even tougher. The car felt quite positive straight out of the box, but this track is pretty unforgiving, so that even a small balance issue costs you a lot of lap time. We’ve definitely got some work to do to find the right setup and balance and unlock some performance.”
“We gathered quite a lot of data today, which gives us useful insight into the areas of our car which we can still work on improving tonight. We were not as competitive as we would have liked to be right now, and our focus is on taking steps forward in refining our performance so that we can challenge our competitors tomorrow.”
Why this matters
Friday practice helps teams fine-tune setups for qualifying and the race; Ferrari's data indicates areas for improvement as they aim to challenge rivals.
Terms in This Story
- FP1
- First free practice session, typically held on Friday morning of a Grand Prix weekend.
- FP2
- Second free practice session, typically held on Friday afternoon of a Grand Prix weekend.
- Qualifying
- Session that determines the starting grid for the race.
- Grand Prix
- One of the principal races in the Formula 1 World Championship.
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