Kimi Antonelli’s Friday at the Red Bull Ring had the look of something more than a tidy practice session. In a second hour that was repeatedly interrupted, occasionally chaotic and still baking hot despite a slight dip in track temperature, the Mercedes rookie ended up fastest in FP2 — and, crucially, did it in a way that suggested the lap time wasn’t a one-off.
Antonelli’s best, a 1:07.014, left him 0.237s clear of Oscar Piastri and 0.325s ahead of Lando Norris, with the McLaren pair again close enough to each other to underline that Woking’s baseline is strong here. Max Verstappen slotted into fourth, half a second down, while Lewis Hamilton made Ferrari’s presence felt in fifth.
The session began with a familiar modern-Friday quirk: several big names effectively “returning” to the weekend after sitting out FP1 due to mandatory rookie running. Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Liam Lawson, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Gabriel Bortoleto all climbed back in, with teams immediately trying to fast-forward through the lost mileage.
But Spielberg has a habit of compressing everything — lap times, traffic, and drama — into tight bursts, and FP2 obliged quickly. Alex Albon’s Williams was back in with a “no power” report on his first exploratory lap, and Verstappen was already unhappy, complaining his seat position felt “completely different” compared to earlier in the day. Those are the sorts of early-weekend irritations that can either be fixed in five minutes… or linger and poison the feel of a car all weekend.
Then came the bigger interruption. Sergio Perez, who had stopped at the end of FP1, suffered a repeat despite an ECU change. He pulled over at Turn 6 and triggered a Virtual Safety Car that drained momentum from the first phase of the run plan. The timing couldn’t have been much worse: teams were still deciding whether the track was coming to them, and the tyre prep window here is already knife-edge.
When the track finally went green again, the drivers immediately started exploring where that edge was. Franco Colapinto ran wide and found the gravel at Turn 6, while Norris locked up into Turn 3 and rotated into a full 180-degree spin — not an impact, but enough to remind everyone how quickly the Red Bull Ring punishes a front axle that isn’t quite under you.
Verstappen set the early reference at 1:08.000 before Antonelli dropped it to 1:07.656, but the real story was always going to be the soft-tyre qualifying sims. And when those arrived, it turned into a proper three-way trade of blows.
Piastri fired first, punching in a 1:07.251, four tenths quicker than Antonelli’s earlier effort. Hamilton followed with a lap good enough to tuck in three tenths behind the McLaren. Norris came through next, close but not quite: 0.088s shy of his team-mate.
Antonelli’s response was the sort that makes engineers sit up. He went 1:07.209 — only 0.042s better than Piastri — and then, when others were plateauing, found another chunk. Another run put him two tenths clear, the final margin on top looking healthier than the small gains that often decide these Fridays.
Behind him, George Russell’s on-board told a different story: understeer in the middle sector and a lap that left him 0.623s off his team-mate. That’s not a crisis in practice, but it is a sizeable internal gap on a short circuit where “it’s only FP2” can quickly become “we’ve missed the window”.
If Antonelli’s top-line pace was Mercedes’ headline, Cadillac’s session was the opposite. Valtteri Bottas limped around with sparks coming from the floor, then reported smoke in the cockpit. The team extinguished a small fire, only for it to reignite even after the first effort to put it out. Combined with Perez failing to register a time at all, it was a grim hour for a new operation that won’t need reminding how unforgiving F1 is when small issues cascade into lost running.
With the soft-tyre flurry done, the final third settled into race sims — long runs on a track that tempts drivers into over-pushing because the lap is so short and the rhythm so repetitive. The earlier VSC meant some programmes were compromised, but most managed to stitch together enough data to at least shape Sunday’s strategic thinking.
For now, though, the picture at the front is pleasantly awkward for everyone else. McLaren look quick and tidy, Verstappen is close enough to be relevant even with the complaints, and Ferrari have Hamilton in the mix. Yet the name at the top is Antonelli’s, and he didn’t get there by catching a tow at the perfect moment or gambling on timing — he simply kept improving as the session went on.
FP2 at Spielberg rarely decides anything on its own. But it does tend to reveal who’s comfortable, and who’s spending their Friday fighting the car. On this evidence, Antonelli is doing an awful lot more of the former than the latter.
