Spielberg Showdown: Russell Spoils Antonelli’s Clean Sweep in Thrilling FP3 Mercedes Duel
Antonelli’s clean sweep this weekend, something he achieved by topping every session so far, was spoiled by his British teammate, who destroyed the Italian’s bid for a perfect practice weekend by topping the time sheets in the final few minutes of the last practice hour of the session. Russell put up a blistering lap of 1:07.096 on the soft tyres, edging out the defending championship leader by a mere 0.038 seconds. Antonelli, who had led all previous sessions so far, held the benchmark for the majority of the session before Russell decided to re-join the 300kph party and whilst on a second push lap, found extra pace with 5 lap old soft tyres, which came as a surprise to everyone.
Nearly every team seemed to have some sort of problem this weekend, and Mercedes didn’t go without their own. Early in the session, the Brit was complaining over the radio about how bad his straight-line braking on the front axle was. After a not-so-ideal weekend in Barcelona a couple of weeks before, which saw 7-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton claim his first victory for Ferrari, Mercedes was back in Austria to prove that it was only a blip in the system, and their 1-2 FP3 finish only proved that they are the favourites for pole later on this afternoon.
Ferrari Gains Confidence, McLaren Searches for Extra Pace
Feeling confident after his win in Barcelona, Lewis Hamilton tried to cement Ferrari’s pace in the running by finishing his session in a strong P3, only 0.115 behind his fellow Brit in first. Ferrari seemed to have solved the balance issues that had been previously plaguing them on Friday. After struggling on Friday, Charles Leclerc also seemed much happier with his car. He briefly held P2 around the middle mark of the session, but he suffered a heavy lock-up into Turn 3, ruining his final qualifying simulation and forcing him down in P7, where he finished.
McLaren had been showing mid-top-10 pace all weekend, not where they would like to be, but where they ended up, in P4 and P5, solidifying McLaren’s pace in the pack but failing to continue their rapid Friday long-run pace. The reigning World Champion was topping the leaderboards early on in the session with an impressive 1:07.832, but his pace was interrupted when his engineers came over the radio to inform him that his left wing mirror was “completely broken.” The gaps in Austria have been extremely tight this weekend, with the gap from Russell in P1 down to Leclerc in P7 being less than four-tenths of a second, setting up for one of the most intense qualifying battles of the 2026 season so far.
Midfield Surprises Emerge
Austria’s favourite Dutchman, Max Verstappen, finished a quiet P6, not where he’d want to be, but it could have been worse. He has quite an uneventful session, the only drama being a mid-session earplug swap due to him reporting a “constant weird interference” in his headset. Red Bull chose to split their focus for data across their two drivers. Veteran Verstappen was sent out to gather data on single-lap pace for qualifying later on in the afternoon, while his French teammate Isack Hadjar was sent to log extensive high-fuel race data, on the hard compound tyres, to try and get the best possible chance of claiming the top step of the podium tomorrow. He ended up finishing P8. Red Bull’s sister team, Racing Bulls, was the one to steal the headlines in the midfield, with Liam Lawson finishing P9, and his rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad finishing P10, VCARB planted themselves firmly in the top 10, showing maybe they too have pace to fight for points in the race.
The conditions in this session were extremely challenging. Track temperatures quickly flew past 51°C, severely impacting tyre degradation by almost immediately destroying the softer-compounded tyres, and causing drivers massive headaches trying to keep the soft tyres alive for even one lap. Carlos Sainz also had a messy session of his own. He was consistently sliding off track at the final corner and ended up receiving a black and white flag for driving unnecessarily slowly.
Looking Ahead: The Burning Questions for Qualifying
With the Mercedes duo trading blows at the top of the timing, the biggest question that everybody has heading into Qualifying is whether Ferrari or McLaren can find enough single-lap performance from their gathered data to break the Silver Arrows’ lock on the front row. The short, high-speed circuit of the Red Bull Ring means that we can expect some chaotic traffic in Q1, and any track limits violations, especially into Turns 3, 9 and 10, will ruthlessly delete much-needed lap times. Both Cadillac and Aston Martin are on the back foot this weekend, facing a massive mountain after bottoming the time sheets in FP3. Track temperatures aren’t expected to differ from today, meaning that we will unlikely be seeing the soft tyre during the race, unless someone is bold enough to try to keep them alive for more than 2 laps.
