Red Bull boss calls for Mercedes to sort Lewis Hamilton contract after Briton dominates Friday running in Austria

'I’m hoping at Silverstone you’re going to finally get your finger out and sign a contract. He’s worth every penny!' said Christian Horner after Friday's practice sessions for the Austrian GP

The world champion has come under fire from Christian Horner (Getty Images)

Lewis Hamilton continued the form that won him last weekend’s French Grand Prix, as he set the fastest times in both of today’s practice sessions for the Austrian Grand Prix. The race, held on the Red Bull Ring owned by energy drink magnate Dietrich Mateschitz, is the second leg of a triple header which sees the British Grand Prix follow next weekend.

This is the first time in the sports’ history that three races have been held on successive weekends, and is likely to be the last such is the increasing toll on people within the F1 circus and the sheer logistics of moving hospitality units and equipment in time.

The world champion came under fire, however, from Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, who claimed that the time he is taking to sign a new deal with Mercedes is causing a bottleneck in the driver market.

Hamilton and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff have been talking for months, but no deal has yet been inked. In the meantime, Horner waits to see what his driver Daniel Ricciardo will do as, if he chooses to leave Red Bull, he may need to call back Red Bull-contracted Carlos Sainz from Renault.

“I think the whole driver market is waiting for Toto’s driver to kick that off,” Horner said in a press conference here that included Wolff.

“I’m hoping at Silverstone you’re going to finally get your finger out and sign a contract. He’s worth every penny! As soon as Toto signs his contract, or two contracts, that then will cascade, and Carlos Sainz will be a mechanism within that.

“Our intention is to retain both drivers [the currently contracted Max Verstappen and Ricciardo]. Once that’s cleared, we’ll sit down with Carlos. But things are progressing well with Daniel.”

The lap times round this short, 4.3 km track were refreshingly close, with the honours in each of the three sector times being shared between Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

Lewis Hamilton in action during Friday’s practice sessions (AFP/Getty Images)

Hamilton beat team-mate Valtteri Bottas by 0.127s in the morning session and by 0.176s in the afternoon, trimming his lap time from 1m 04.839s to 1m 04.579s. However, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was only 0.233s adrift of him in the morning, as they were chased by the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen, which sandwiched Verstappen’s partner Daniel Ricciardo.

In the afternoon, Vettel was the Mercedes duo’s closest challenger, 0.236s down, with Ricciardo and Verstappen next up.

Of late Ferrari have tended to go better on a Saturday, especially in the afternoon when both they and Mercedes have access to engine modes which confer a small but crucial power boost for qualifying. This weekend all of Renault’s contenders – Red Bull, their own team and McLaren – will have access to something similar for the first time.

Renault’s upgraded ‘Spec B’ engine behaved well on its debut in Canada recently, and the qualifying boost comes following a brief and successful test in a practice session at Paul Ricard last weekend. They hope this will satisfy their runners, most especially Verstappen and Ricciardo, who have long been complaining how much they miss out to Mercedes and Ferrari when the chips are down on Saturday afternoon. The way that F1 is these days, with overtaking being so difficult, where you start tends to determine your race and therefore where you finish.

Vettel was the Mercedes duo’s closest challenger (Getty Images)

“It’s great news that we are capable of introducing a new qualifying mode, which is making an impact for the first time,” Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul told reporters. “We tested it on track but we didn’t run it. But we had to test it on track, just to make sure of driveability. It’s part of the validation programme. Now that it’s been validated it’s going to be available for all three teams.

“We needed a bit more time, due to the fact that we had to homologate it on one fuel and then the other fuel.” Where Renault and McLaren run BP/Castrol fuel and lubricants, Red Bull have a deal with Exxon/Mobil.

While promising a further power grade when Renault’s ‘Spec C’ engine comes on stream later in the season, Abiteboul stressed the importance of reliability. Last year in particular, Renault suffered problems with their MGU-H energy system, which uses an electric motor to help spin the turbocharger faster at low speeds. This is the system which malfunctioned on Ricciardo’s car in Monaco, where the tight nature of the track nevertheless allowed him to win despite the loss of 160 bhp.