“It smells terrible in here, like brakes and hotness” was Liam Lawson’s radio message at the end of practice day at Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix, but it could have belonged to any of the 22 drivers at the Red Bull Ring.

On a scorching day in Austria, there was a repeat of the theme of the Barcelona GP; tyres melting in the heat. Plus a big theme of Montreal and Monaco; brakes cooking leading to many a venture into the run-off. 

It’s why no driver was giving a glowing review of their day, but a picture of the pecking order is starting to emerge. 

Having crunched the long-run data from FP2 and based on what the teams and drivers said after the session, we get the following takeaways. 

McLaren is Mercedes' biggest threat (so far) 

As it stands, McLaren looks to be “best of the rest” behind Mercedes by Oscar Piastri’s own admission.

“I don't know if we're in the mix with Mercedes. I think we seem to be best of the rest after them,” Piastri said.

“But Mercedes always finds a lot of pace from Friday to Saturday. So I'm expecting them to be very, very quick tomorrow.

“But I think personally it's been a pretty good day.”

Single-lap pace FP2

1 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) 1m07.014s
2 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.237s
3 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.325s
4 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.550s
5 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.597s
6 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.623s
7 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +0.744s
8 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.841s

The McLarens were second and third on single lap pace in FP2 and looked encouragingly strong on the long runs, comparable to Mercedes when you account for Norris and Piastri’s longer stint length.

Long-run pace FP2 

1 Russell 1m11.220s (4 laps)
2 Antonelli 1m11.265s (6 laps)
3 Norris 1m11.466s (8 laps)
4 Verstappen 1m11.704s (9 laps)
5 Hamilton 1m11.773s (6 laps)
6 Piastri 1m11.777s (8 laps)
7 Hadjar 1m11.910s (5 laps)
8 Leclerc 1m12.116s (6 laps)
(all on mediums) 

George Russell called McLaren’s pace “the biggest concern for us” and pointed to McLaren’s prowess in hot conditions.

“There's a real trend of these hot races that they're strong,” Russell said. “We saw it last year. We've seen it for years now. 

“Miami was the first real hot race, and they arguably could have won. Barcelona, Lando, was similar pace to ourselves and Lewis. 

“Then here, they look really strong again. So there's a real trend at these hot races that they seem to step it up, and we maybe take a step backwards.”

So for now Mercedes and McLaren are both talking each other up but they’re also wary of the threat from Ferrari…

How much is Ferrari holding back?

On raw data alone - fifth and eighth fastest on both single lap and long run pace - Ferrari’s Friday in Austria was disappointing. 

There were such big hopes for this weekend given Lewis Hamilton’s Barcelona GP victory and the arrival of its first 2026 engine upgrade, fresh from ADUO ruling its engine was more than 4% off Red Bull’s. 

But if Barcelona taught us anything, it’s that an under-the-radar Friday from Ferrari can turn into a triumphant Saturday and Sunday. 

“Barcelona told us that you can't draw every conclusion from Friday and map it reliably onto Sunday,” Mercedes deputy team boss Bradley Lord said.

“I don't think we've seen everything that Ferrari have got today.” 

And McLaren’s technical director of engineering Neil Houldey said “We know that Ferrari were very, very quick in Barcelona, and there's no reason why they won't be as fast here.” 

Charles Leclec was perhaps less convinced, judging by his post-FP2 comments at least. 

“Not so confident, but I mean, never say never,” Leclerc said when asked if he was confident of a Barcelona-style turnaround.

“But it's true that at the moment, on the Friday of Barcelona, there were a few elements that will lead us to think that there was quite a bit of performance in the car

“At the moment, it's been a struggle. It’s been a difficult Friday for the team, and we'll try and put everything together and see what we can recover tomorrow.” 

GPS data from the straights in practice suggests Ferrari may have been holding back a bit of engine power, and there is clearly performance to be found. 

There's no reason why Ferrari's small turbo wouldn't prove effective here and it appears unlikely that its upgraded chassis that performed so well at Barcelona, would have such a negative downturn here.

The question will be how much performance it will have when everything is turned up and the right set-up window is found, and whether it’s enough to get amongst Mercedes and McLaren. 

What of the upgraded Red Bull? 

Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies said he’d be happy if Red Bull’s major Austrian GP upgrade brought its gap to the front down to two to three tenths of a second. 

But it’s currently facing a bigger deficit than that based on a tricky Friday.

There were issues unrelated to the upgrade that limited track time, but when the RB22 did run, there was a multitude of complaints over the team radio from both Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar.

Hadjar said afterwards: “It just seems like it's hard to extract the most of it because we're completely off balance and we're struggling a lot, so there's a lot of digging to do tonight.” 

Verstappen’s FP2 long run was encouraging. The final average is somewhat inflated by a longer run versus the Mercedes duo, so taking the first four laps of his long run, he’s more like two to three tenths away, rather than half a second. 

Verstappen’s something of a Red Bull Ring specialist, and with such tight margins, he’ll hope to at least have a sniff at the top three teams here, on a track that should theoretically suit an upgraded Red Bull more than Barcelona did.

The midfield is close

They might have locked out the top eight positions in FP2, but none of the top four teams can afford to slip up, or they’ll be sniped by one of the cars in a tightly contested midfield fight. 

Audi once again looks strong with Nico Hulkenberg averaging 1m12.134s on his nine-lap hard tyre stint. That was comparable with the Alpines and Racing Bulls, with Haas slightly behind that group. 

The question will be whether, unlike in recent races, Audi is able to turn that promising pace into results on Sunday. 

Behind them, Williams was “not super happy” with its high fuel run and has work to do to break into the midfield this weekend. 

The upgraded Cadillac was impossible to read, given its litany of issues on Friday - save for a promising FP1 lap from Valtteri Bottas - and an unchanged Aston Martin unsurprisingly remains F1’s 11th fastest car at the Red Bull Ring.