Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Australian driver Oscar Piastri’s hopes of a breakthrough in the Austrian Grand Prix have suffered an early setback after his McLaren developed brake problems in first practice for Sunday’s race.
On a fraught afternoon in the McLaren garage, teammate Lando Norris had to spend the first 45 minutes off-track as mechanics grappled with a hydraulics problem in the world champion’s car.
But at least Piastri’s complaints about his car’s brakes did not prevent him setting the third quickest time, 0.117 seconds slower than championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
Antonelli’s Mercedes teammate, George Russell was a close second (+0.400). Norris had to be content with seventh.
McLaren chose not to run a new rear wing that had been scheduled to be used after deciding it needed further preparation work.
Piastri finished ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (+0.281) and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton (+0.665). Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad was sixth. The Australian is sixth in the overall standings, 88 points adrift of Antonelli.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton won the previous round at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for his first victory since joining Ferrari from Mercedes last year. He goes into the weekend 41 points behind Antonelli, who has won five of seven races.
Red Bull, at their home circuit, were one of a number of teams to have an difficult start with Verstappen suffering issues with his upgraded car while teammate Isack Hadjar’s car needed a hurried engine change and he missed the first 35 minutes.
Four-time world champion Verstappen complained that “the whole car is shaking under braking”.
“At first we had an engine issue on Isack’s car before the beginning of the session, so we had to do a very late call to change his engine,” said team boss Laurent Mekies.
“And then on Max, we also had a troubled start with a couple of software issues that got us stuck in the garage.”
Ferrari had F2 driver Dino Beganovic in Charles Leclerc’s car for the session, clocking the ninth best time, with the Monegasque returning for the later hour.
Sergio Perez’s Cadillac brought out red flags with just over a minute remaining after the Mexican stopped on the uphill climb, with the session then ended prematurely and no drivers able to do any practice starts.
Japanese driver Ryo Hirakawa replaced Esteban Ocon at Haas for the session and knocked over one of the team mechanics when he overshot his pit box, fortunately without injury.
