Mercedes quickest as problem halts Vettel

2015 Austrian Grand Prix first practice

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Mercedes set the pace in the first practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix, with only Ferrari able to get within one second of them.

Nico Rosberg headed the times with a lap of 1’10.401 which he set in the opening half-hour of the session after a sustained run on the soft compound tyres. Team mate Lewis Hamilton was three-tenths of a second adrift after complaining of vibrations on his second set of Pirellis.

Ferrari showed some encouraging pace with Kimi Raikkonen a further three-tenths of a second away from Hamilton. But the team’s other car only managed four laps before pulling over with a suspected gearbox problem.

There were problems for the team in the pits as well: team principal Maurizio Arrivabene was almost struck by the Williams of Felipe Massa as he crossed the fast lane.

McLaren also endured another troubled session. Fernando Alonso crawled back into the pits after his first run, and although he was able to return to the track later on he had to cope with very poor gear shifts.

Jenson Button in the other car reported problems getting the tyres up to temperature. But he was far from the only driver with this problem as several runners struggled for grip in cool conditions on a track with little rubber laid down on it.

Late in the session Valtteri Bottas took fourth place and Felipe Nasr put his Sauber a promising fifth.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
16Nico RosbergMercedes1’10.40136
244Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’10.7090.30828
37Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’11.0280.62722
477Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes1’11.4521.05126
512Felipe NasrSauber-Ferrari1’11.6331.23228
626Daniil KvyatRed Bull-Renault1’11.6421.24131
73Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-Renault1’11.7241.32329
833Max VerstappenToro Rosso-Renault1’11.8251.42438
919Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes1’11.8901.48929
1011Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’11.9051.50437
1155Carlos Sainz JnrToro Rosso-Renault1’11.9481.54732
1213Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Mercedes1’12.0041.60334
1327Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1’12.0311.63036
1430Jolyon PalmerLotus-Mercedes1’12.0501.64927
159Marcus EricssonSauber-Ferrari1’12.1591.75830
1622Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Honda1’12.9202.51930
1714Fernando AlonsoMcLaren-Honda1’13.2722.87110
1828Will StevensManor-Ferrari1’13.9373.53629
1998Roberto MerhiManor-Ferrari1’15.4595.05811
205Sebastian VettelFerrari1’15.6845.2834

First practice visual gaps

Nico Rosberg – 1’10.401

+0.308 Lewis Hamilton – 1’10.709

+0.627 Kimi Raikkonen – 1’11.028

+1.051 Valtteri Bottas – 1’11.452

+1.232 Felipe Nasr – 1’11.633

+1.241 Daniil Kvyat – 1’11.642

+1.323 Daniel Ricciardo – 1’11.724

+1.424 Max Verstappen – 1’11.825

+1.489 Felipe Massa – 1’11.890

+1.504 Sergio Perez – 1’11.905

+1.547 Carlos Sainz Jnr – 1’11.948

+1.603 Pastor Maldonado – 1’12.004

+1.630 Nico Hulkenberg – 1’12.031

+1.649 Jolyon Palmer – 1’12.050

+1.758 Marcus Ericsson – 1’12.159

+2.519 Jenson Button – 1’12.920

+2.871 Fernando Alonso – 1’13.272

+3.536 Will Stevens – 1’13.937

+5.058 Roberto Merhi – 1’15.459

+5.283 Sebastian Vettel – 1’15.684

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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32 comments on “Mercedes quickest as problem halts Vettel”

  1. Crofty and co again wasting all the session to talk about how F1 is crap rather than talking about what actually is happening, about the developments, about the on-track action, about what actually is interesting.

    1. Nothing is interesting about this season.
      Would you watch the premier league if the season is over?
      We have already known the results of season..
      The rest is testing for 2016 :)

      1. I disagree with you on so many levels on everything you said.

        But would you not watch testing? What are you doing then?

      2. So @Malik, why are you watching then?

        1. @kobe08: I am watching 2016 testing :)

      3. @mateuss and @malik I agree with both of you.

        1. F1 for me has its own magic, but if the results at least for the midfield cars are more unpredictable it would become more fun to follow

          1. Drivers are standing 2 by 2 according to their constructors. Only thing that brings a remote change is little mistakes by drivers if their team is anywhere near another one or reliability issues.

    2. I thought they did a good job. They talked about the Mclaren tech development, that was interesting.

      They saw the Ferrari brake down. Then they poked fun at the drivers systematically abusing track limits which is well overdue and extremely warranted.

      And nothing else happened.

      1. @mateuss, I fully agree. That was a total waste of time. Stopped watching some minutes before the end cause nothing interesting was happening. The info from the sky team wasn’t very usefull either.. Crofty totally messed up the tokens info etc.

  2. Austria seems more challenging than Monaco !

  3. Surely that was an ‘unsafe release’ for Arrivabene?

    1. So whats the penalty :P

    2. Time for a penalty.. Arrivabene consigned to the garages for the rest of the weekend.

      1. That’s a football manager penalty.. F1 penalty would be he is held for 5 seconds next time before he wants to leave the pit wall :P

        1. ColdFly F1 (@)
          19th June 2015, 12:49

          Next you tell him he can only have 4 PU changes; not good news for a chain smoker ;)

      2. That actually makes sense!

    3. He goes to the corner of his pitbox and turns to face the wall. Stay that way for the rest of the weekend to not know what is happening on the track.

      No risk of him running on to the track as well.

    4. Hey, when you need a cigarette… ;)

      1. Hahaha :-)

  4. The new graphic on the site for this feature definitely gets a thumbs up from me @keithcollantine !

  5. Visual Gap . Nice interesting little feature .

  6. i am not a Vettel fan but i feel for him, poor bugger, Ferrari need to sort that car this time round,
    yes as for Crofty and co, they put me to sleep, thanks to the cat which jumped up on my lap i did not miss the first practice.

    nice Keith congrates on the new graphics, yep like them.

  7. I knew it was the car! He’s even slower than Manor!

  8. Couldn’t believe the amount of time Sky devoted to the Arrivabene incident in the post-practice analysis, complete with slow-motion from every angle etc. It can’t be easy filling airtime after an uneventful session but Sky are scraping the barrel. Don’t they have any producers with a few ideas? Maybe it’s only me who thinks a little of Ted Kravitz goes a very long way.

    1. Red flag incident of Vettel was not nice, but they are also still talking about that….

  9. Kimi is lucky Vettel hits some trouble so he can close the gap to make it seem like he deserves the seat.

  10. Cool chart! Great conversation starter. well done Keith!

  11. Have Sauber dropped in the upgraded Ferrari engine for this weekend?

Comments are closed.