Max Verstappen (Red Bull), who left last Sunday but won the previous two years on the circuit owned by his team, announced a counterattack by leading free practice on Friday in the Styrian Grand Prix , the second in the Formula One World Championship, on the same stage and with the same characteristics as that of Austria last Sunday.

The 22-year-old Verstappen, who could still become this year's winner of the youngest event in history - if he succeeds in dethroning the seven-time English world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) - was the best in trials for the Styrian Grand Prix, the Austrian region in which the Spielberg Red Bull Ring is located. Where the Mexican Sergio Pérez (Racing Point) marked the third time; and the Spanish Carlos Sainz (McLaren), the fifth.

'Mad Max' set the fastest lap in the second session, in which the best times were set, all on a soft tire and in the first hour of the 90-minute session, before trying long runs. The Dutchman did it by covering, in the best of his 27 afternoon laps, the 4,318 meters of the circuit in one minute, three seconds and 660 thousandths , 43 less than the Finn's Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes), first World Cup leader after winning the past Sunday.

The tests were conducted in good weather - the afternoon session ended with 31 degrees Celsius and 44 on the asphalt - but weather forecasts threaten strong storms for Saturday ; and an uncertain qualification could be postponed to Sunday entirely during the first hours of Sunday, when it could also rain on the Red Bull Ring.

Sainz, "a little happier"

If so, -qualification was canceled-, the times of this Friday would end up determining the starting grid for the second race of the year. So the Mexican 'Checo' Pérez, sixth last Sunday, would start third, in a second row that he would occupy with his partner at Racing Point, the Canadian Lance Stroll.

Sainz, "a little happier" with his car than last weekend, who warned that the possibility of qualification being canceled is real, ended the fifth time . The talented driver from Madrid - who will race in Ferrari next year - would start from a hypothetical third row next to the other Mercedes, that of Hamilton, who aims this course to equal the historical record of seven World Cups of the German Michael Schumacher, still convalescing from the serious ski accident he suffered in late 2013.

But without anticipating the events, again behind closed doors and with strong sanitary security measures, the only certainty is that the trials of the second World Cup test of the pandemic started. Which, for the moment, will be the second of the first 10, since this Friday the FIA ​​(International Automobile Federation), which provides for a tournament between 15 and 18, announced the Tuscan Grand Prix -in Mugello-, on 13 September and a week after that of Italy, as usual, in Monza; and that of Russia, in the Sochi Olympic ring, on the 27th of that month.

Italy will be, for the moment, the third country to repeat the test, although on a different circuit, in this F1 World Cup. It will be after Austria, which hosts its second Grand Prix; and England, which, after the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend, will organize two in August and at Silverstone: the traditional Grand Prix of Great Britain and, seven days later - on the 9th - the 70th Anniversary, in tribute to the first race in F1 history.

'Checo', who already shone last weekend with his "pink Mercedes" - there are few who claim that his car, with that German engine, is a carbon copy of the 'silver arrows' of 2019- had been the fastest in the first free, in which Sainz was seventh. The brave pilot from Guadalajara improved Verstappen by 96 thousandths, retired last Sunday, due to an electrical failure, in the eleventh of the 71 laps: the same ones that are scheduled for this Sunday, to complete a 306-kilometer and a half route.

The main incident of that session, in which Mercedes de Bottas and Hamilton marked the third and fourth time -with a medium, unlike the rest, which did it with a soft tire- was the red flag for the crane to take off the track the Canadian debuted Nicholas Latifi Williams. That and the penalty for the young Englishman Lando Norris, Sainz's teammate in McLaren, who on Sunday signed his first podium in F1, finishing third.

Lando, eighth in the free practice this Friday, will lose three places on the grid for overtaking with yellow flags during the morning session.

The second test was also stopped for a few minutes because of another red flag: the one caused by the Australian Daniel Ricciardo, after crashing - without major consequences - his Renault in the ninth of the ten corners of the Austrian track.

Ricciardo's seat, which will replace Sainz at McLaren, will be occupied next year, in the diamond team, by another Spaniard: Fernando Alonso.

The double Asturian world champion (2005 and 2006), who returns to the team with which he celebrated his two titles, starred on Wednesday, with the announcement of his return to the queen category, in which he signed the 32 victories that Spain has. Throughout its history in F1, the great informative bombshell of the start of the World Cup.

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  • McLaren
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  • Lewis Hamilton
  • Russia
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