Any hope that Canada might have revealed a McLaren vulnerability has been blown out of the water after a comfortable Lando Norris-led one-two in Friday practice.
But for the first time this season there were three impressive McLaren drivers on track, with rookie Alex Dunne stealing headlines after a rapid FP1 outing that boosted his chance of making it onto the F1 grid.
While it’s good news for the Irishman, there’s bad news for Australian Jack Doohan, who finds himself facing an extended stint on the sidelines as Alpine appears to make a call on his replacement.
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NORRIS LAYS DOWN THE GAUNTLET
Lando Norris said ahead of the round that there was no better track on the calendar for him to try to bounce back after a bruising weekend in Canada, and he made good on that pronouncement on Friday.

Norris was comfortably fastest at the end of second practice, heading Oscar Piastri by 0.157 seconds — a decisive margin around such a short circuit.
It was all the more emphatic for the fact Norris had skipped FP1 to give development driver Alex Dunne one of the team’s mandatory practice outings. This was the work of just one hour of track time — or, really, 27 minutes, given Norris logged his best time before the halfway mark of the hour.
“I’ve always enjoyed this place,” he said. “The car felt good from the off.
“Alex gave good feedback this morning after FP1 … and I think they moved the car in the right direction for FP2. We just need to understand if we want more of that tomorrow or a little be less of somewhere in the middle.
“Good steps in the right direction but there’s still a little bit more to come, hopefully.”
Norris needs this weekend to work, but it’s not about his 22-point championship deficit.
If he can’t be quicker than Piastri at the Red Bull Ring, one of his favourite circuits, then where can he bank on being faster?
And with McLaren not intending to bring any more suspension tweaks to help with the lack of front-end feeling of the car, if he can’t make the MCL39 work for him this weekend, when will he get it to click?
The good news for the Briton is that he’s so far shown exactly what he needs to.
Piastri, however, was unflustered to have finished behind his teammate.
McLaren has brought some upgrades to Austria, and the two cars were running in different specifications through FP2.
Telemetry shows Piastri was faster on the straights but losing out generally through the corners, suggesting different downforce levels.
“It looked pretty good,” Piastri said. “The car is feeling good. I think the pace is quite good, so it was a positive first day.”
The Australian has one clear deficit to Norris, however.
There’s almost nothing between them in the opening part of the lap, but Norris is far more effective into the downhill right-hander at turn 4. The Briton is earlier on the brakes and them better on exit gaining around 0.1 seconds — most of his eventual margin.
It’s clearly still close between them. As has always been the case this year, it’ll come down to execution in Q3.
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ALEX DUNNE DOES GOOD
For the first time this season there weren’t two but three McLaren drivers on the pace, with reservist Alex Dunne getting behind the wheel in FP1 and seriously impressing.
Dunne, from County Offaly in central Ireland, was the first Irish driver to participate in a grand prix weekend since Ralph Firman in 2003.
The current Formula 2 championship leader was signed to McLaren as reserve and development driver at the start of the year and had undertaken two private tests in old machinery in preparation for his Austria outing.
But he looked like a driver with considerably more experience when he got into the cockpit for an important session for the team as it validated some upgrades.
He then cemented his stellar debut with a blast on soft tyres that put him just 0.069 seconds behind Piastri, fourth in the order.
“Better than expected, for sure,” was how he summarised his hour-long outing.
“Straight away I just felt really comfortable and I had the confidence to push more and more, so then at the end I felt comfortable to go out and try and do a decent lap.
“The goal as never really to try and do a lap time and have performance; it was more just to try and help out as much as I could and make sure that the car and the things we wanted to test were in good place for Lando to jump back in.
“To be honest, I just felt really comfortable straight away.”
Team principal Andrea Stella sung his praises, putting into context how complicated the session had been for the rookie.
“We have to acknowledge he has gone through quite an extensive plan of testing, with some new parts, with some rake work, with some adjustments on the steering wheel that we don’t see on television but that definitely keep the drivers very busy,” he told Sky Sports. “You have to be very precise, very much on time, because some of the settings need to happen on portions of the track.
“In all this Alex has been quite diligent and impressive.
“Then he had also the chance to show some speed, and — no surprise — he’s a fast driver.”
Stella suggested he had been running with lower fuel than usual for FP1, and other variables will have played a role — he set his soft time later than most others, for example — but it was undeniably impressive nonetheless.
But the fact a rookie on his first public F1 outing could get himself so quickly up to speed also underlines in how good a place the McLaren car is at this circuit.
Compare him to, for example, Dino Beganovic, who took Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari to 18th and 0.27 seconds behind Lewis Hamilton in the same session — albeit both Ferrari cars suffered technical problems. It was a perfectly acceptable result for a rookie, but it highlighted both Dunne’s good work and the strength of the McLaren car this weekend.
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VERSTAPPEN IN THE MIX DESPITE QUIET DAY
McLaren was always likely to go well at the Red Bull Ring, but Red Bull Racing cannot be discounted
Verstappen ended the day 0.318 seconds off the pace, but both Piastri and Norris considered that striking distance for the Dutchman.
“Max is still close, so I think he’ll be definitely a threat this weekend,” Piastri said, while Norris highlighted that Red Bull Racing usually improves much more than McLaren on Friday night.
“We’ve showed a bit more pace than some of the others,” said the Briton. “I certainly think that they’re going to catch up.”
Verstappen gave little away at the end of the day but highlighted only one issue the team had to sort out ahead of qualifying — far more optimistic than his usual Friday debriefs this season.
“I think overall it was quite straightforward,” he said. “We didn’t have any big issues but were just lacking bit of pace — a bit too much understeer in the car as well, short run and long run, so that is something that we have to try and get rid of.”
The telemetry shows that understeer is hurting him most through the fast downhill double left-hander of turn 6-7.
The Dutchman is around 0.075 seconds behind Norris after exiting turn 4, but by the exit of turn 7 his deficit has grown to 0.26 seconds, a significant loss.
The data trace suggests the Dutchman is having to carry much less speed through the twin turns, being down by around 10 kilometres per hour on the McLaren.
It gives him and the team a clear objective ahead of Saturday. If it can dial out some of that understeer — and assuming that it was holding some speed in reserve, as is usually the case — it could be right in the mix for a McLaren-disrupting pole and potential victory.
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FERRARI CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT UPGRADES
Much is riding on the first tranche of Ferrari upgrades that arrived in Austria, but the picture didn’t look great on Friday night.
Charles Leclerc was the quicker of the teammates but was a massive 0.61 seconds down on the fastest time in fifth. Lewis Hamilton was 0.321 seconds further back in 10th.
It was a disrupted day for the Scuderia as it sought to evaluate its new floor.
Hamilton’s FP1 was curtailed significantly by a gearbox problem, while technical issues also hampered rookie Dino Beganovic, who spent time in the garage with that new floor off the car.
FP2 was smoother, but the single-lap pace was uninspiring.
“Not spectacular,” was Hamilton’s summary.
“But I think there are lots of learnings, so I think we will make some changes. Hopefully we can try and get a little bit closer, but we won’t be at the front.
“The car actually doesn’t feel bad, we’re just a huge chunk off pace-wise, so we need to look into that, and that’s about it really.”
Leclerc was more positive, however, declaring that the upgrade “does what it’s expected to do” and that the car’s race pace was genuinely competitive.
“Our race pace is very positive,” he said. “We were, I would say, [setting] very similar lap times to the fastest guys, so that’s good.”
But, like Hamilton, he said qualifying pace was a crucial problem despite his good long-run speed.
“We’ve seen recently that everything is so close that as soon as you start P6, P7, then in the race it’s extremely difficult to come back where you should be,” he said.
“That’s really our target, to try and maximise qualifying. Whether we’ll make it or not, I don’t know, but there’ll be a lot of work tonight to try and maximise that.”
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COLAPINTO TO KEEP DOOHAN’S SEAT
The fifth weekend of Franco Colapinto’s five-round evaluation couldn’t have started much worse, with the Argentine anchored to 20th place at the end of FP2 — and not for the first time this season.
Colapinto was 0.258 seconds off the back of the pack and 0.563 seconds slower than teammate Pierre Gasly.
Theses are of course only practice results, but they fit neatly with much of the rest of Colapinto’s elevation at Jack Doohan’s expense.
Nonetheless, Colapinto appears set to hang onto his seat for the foreseeable future.
According to The Race, Alpine will stick with the rookie for next weekend’s British Grand Prix and for the rest of the season short of a significant performance slump. No new evaluation timeline has been set; essentially he’s now on a rolling deal.
It’s dire news for Doohan, who now appears to have no way back onto the grid this season despite Colapinto having brought no significant improvement in performance this season.
Speaking ahead of the weekend and reflecting on his season-best performance in Canada, Colapinto said it was important for him to carry on his momentum with a strong practice showing.
“We are really focusing on Friday, having a good day, starting with a base and with a car that we think works and trying to take the positive things that we found the last couple of races and bring them to here,” he said. “It’s important, Friday, you kind of build your momentum for the rest of the weekend.”
He said, however, that he was optimistic about his long-run pace.
Aside from his lucrative sponsorship backing, Colapinto was sought after by Alpine executive adviser Flavio Briatore after his impressive late-season Williams debut last season, which followed a strong FP1 outing at rain-affected British Grand Prix earlier in 2024.
On Thursday the Argentine said getting back on track at Silverstone would be useful for his personal growth.
“It was a very important weekend [last year], and to be able to have that comparison now in the same track I’ve been driving the Williams last year, it’s good,” he said.