Spielberg, FP: Giovinazzi on top in Free Practice

Antonio Giovinazzi’s top form continues: the PREMA Racing ace set the quickest laptime in today’s Free Practice at Spielberg in a 1:13.922, two tenths faster than teammate Pierre Gasly. Jordan King completed the top 3.

The session opened in warm temperatures with the cars feeding onto the track on Soft Pirelli tyres. Nicholas Latifi set the early pace ahead of Luca Ghiotto, but Alex Lynn was the first man to dip under 1m15s and moved to the top of the timesheet. Gasly found some extra pace to better the Briton’s laptime, with Giovinazzi also able to move up to P2. However, Sergey Sirotkin was on a mission and went quicker to sit at the top with a laptime of 1:14.476.

Fifteen minutes into the session, the Virtual Safety Car was briefly deployed after Latifi span and stopped at Turn 8. The Canadian driver managed to rejoin the pits safely. When the action was live, King claimed the top spot in a 1:14.241 whilst Gasly pipped Sirotkin to go P2. With 20 minutes left on the clock, Gustav Malja stopped at Turn 4 due to technical gremlins which caused a red flag period to retrieve the Rapax car. When the track was green again, there were thirteen minutes left in the session. There was another VSC period after Mitch Evans and Nabil Jeffri went off at Turn 1 almost simultaneously. The Arden driver continued, but the Campos man could not; thus ending his session prematurely.

In the dying minutes, Giovinazzi found a clear lap to clock a blazing laptime of 1:13.922 whilst Gasly also improved on his personal best to edge out King and take P2. At the chequered flag, the Italian rookie looked strong ahead of this afternoon’s qualifying session. Gasly and King finished P2 and P3 respectively ahead of Raffaele Marciello, Artem Markelov, Sirotkin, Oliver Rowland, Lynn, Ghiotto and Marvin Kirchhöfer.