Lando Norris laid down an important marker to McLaren's Formula 1 rivals - and his team-mate Oscar Piastri - in second practice for the Austrian Grand Prix.
Norris said pre-weekend that "if there is any track that I would go to give myself the best feeling" it would be the Red Bull Ring, as he works out whether a new McLaren front suspension geometry will improve his comfortability in the MCL39.
Having sat out FP1 to hand his car over to McLaren junior Alex Dunne, Norris settled in quickly once in the car for second practice, going fastest of all before the mid-session qualifying simulation runs.
And he ended up at the top once those soft-tyre runs had taken place, too, ending the session with a best time of 1m04.580s that left him 0.157 seconds clear of team-mate Piastri, who entered the weekend with a 22-point drivers' championship lead over Norris.
Max Verstappen got closest to the McLarens but he still lapped 0.318s off Norris. And even that attempt carried a caveat, as the Red Bull driver's second run came close to 15 minutes after Norris set his session-best time.
Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll’s lap was set at a more comparable time to the McLarens' and only looked better as the session went on. Though Verstappen ultimately bumped him out of the top three, Stroll was fourth and still more than a tenth and a half up on Charles Leclerc - who like Verstappen set his time later in the session.
Leclerc had the only real on-track incident of note when his Ferrari snapped right and into the gravel at the fast Turn 6 left-hander a quarter of an hour into the session. He had earlier run deep in the uphill braking zone into the Turn 3 hairpin, taking to the runoff as a result.
Team-mate Lewis Hamilton caught the ire of Kimi Antonelli, who was forced to take to the runoff in the braking zone for Turn 4 to avoid the driver he has replaced at Mercedes. Hamilton ended the session 10th, one place and 0.026s ahead of Antonelli.
FP1 pacesetter George Russell was sixth ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, who had a reasonably encouraging FP2 as far as headline pace was concerned.
Though Tsunoda was 0.712s off pacesetter Norris, he had been a tenth of a second faster than Red Bull team-mate Verstappen before the four-time world champion's later soft-tyre run.
Gabriel Bortoleto again made the top 10 for Sauber, as he did in FP1, in eighth, while Fernando Alonso was ninth in the second Aston Martin.
FP2 times
1 Lando Norris (McLaren) 1m04.580s
2 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.157s
3 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.318s
4 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +0.442s
5 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.610s
6 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.649s
7 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull) +0.712s
8 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) +0.831s
9 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +0.877s
10 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.931s
11 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.957s
12 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +0.963s
13 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +0.967s
14 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.033s
15 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.118s
16 Alex Albon (Williams) +1.185s
17 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +1.234s
18 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.255s
19 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +1.338s
20 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.596s
