Max Verstappen topped practice for Formula 1’s 2024 Austrian Grand Prix after causing mid-session red flag, as Mercedes and McLaren showed pace and Ferrari only joined the lead fray late on.
In a busy opening third of the sole practice session at the Red Bull weekend within the sprint format, Verstappen established the first-place benchmark at 1m07m961s, before George Russell and Lewis Hamilton whittled that down along with the Dutchman with as their opening runs went on.
The Mercedes cars used the hard tyres at this stage while Verstappen stuck to the mediums, although he spent a chunk of the opening third making adjustments in the pits.
By the time the whole field were in the pits at the 20-minute mark, Hamilton led Russell with a 1m06.254s and Verstappen sat third.
After a brief lull in action, the pack headed out again largely en masse, with the leaders concentrating on higher-fuel running and lapping several seconds off the earlier pace.
At the start of his long-run, Russell locked up and ran off at the uphill and tight Turn 3 right-hander before continuing on his way.
But the session was then interrupted by a red flag just passed the halfway stage when Verstappen stopped on the run to Turn 1 with what he called an “engine fault” that developed after he had run wide at Turn 1 and then made a steering switch change to his high-speed differential settings.
His RB20 then lost drive and Verstappen could not coax it back into life before halting it on the pit straight and then letting it roll back down the hill towards a gap in the pitwall, as the red flags flew.
Marshals push the stopped car of Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, in the pit lane
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
The marshals pushed Verstappen back into the pitlane and he returned to the Red Bull garage before the session resumed after a near-five minute stoppage.
After this, Red Bull was able to get Verstappen back out almost immediately having checked the car and discovered that a sensor that had shut off the engine could be quickly reset.
The long-running resumed with little action to note – bar Pierre Gasly briefly going off in the Turn 3 runoff after locking the right-front on his Alpine.
A second lull in action preceded a blast on the softer compounds in the final 10 minutes, where Charles Leclerc first valued Ferrari to the front with a 1m06.055s on the red-walled soft compound.
He was then shuffled down by Verstappen’s…
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