A good, yet slightly troubled day for Ferrari and in particular Sebastian Vettel, ended with them topping the time sheet in FP2 at the clockwise 2.68mile Red Bull Ring in the Austrian Hills.

Vettel suffered transmission problems in FP1 causing him to stop out on circuit but this didn’t cause a change to the gearbox so has not, at this point, cost him a five place grid penalty on race day. Vettel then went on to stop in FP2 calling for Mattia Binotto to confirm that “the two problems are different”, however he did ascertain that the FP2 stoppage was as a result of gearbox issues. Watch this space for a possible overnight gearbox change. Issues aside Vettel went on to finish the day top of the time sheet beating Nico Rosberg to the top spot by 0.011 of a second.

It is however the frightening pace of Kimi Raikkonen on his soft tyre long runs that will keep the Silver Arrows on the ball. We saw earlier in the season at Malaysia, where Vettel had such tyre management and speed on his long runs, that the Ferrari can beat the two Mercedes cars. Raikkonen managed to tread nicely in the 1’11s whereas the Mercedes’ of reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton struggled to find a long run time in the 12’3s. The tardiness of Hamilton’s day was such that it could probably just be put down to a bad day in the office, but on one of the shortest circuits on the calendar and with a field packed together he can ill afford to have another bad day on Saturday. Like Williams in 2014 Hamilton claimed of the Ferrari’s that “it’s definitely closer here than at other circuits”. The mistakes of Hamilton twelve months ago cost him then too and allowed the Williams’ to lock out the front row of the grid.

It’s fantastic to see the Lotus cars performing well and hunting down another positive weekend. It’s difficult to not feel sorry for the two World Champions languishing in the garage, or at the back of the grid when they manage to find themselves on track in their Honda powered McLaren’s. While Red Bull again look like they will continue to underperform at their home track. This could yet strike another hammer blow to the relationship between Renault and Red Bull as it isn’t inconceivable to imagine all eight Mercedes powered cars battling it out with the Ferrari’s in a Q3 shootout.

Can Ferrari lockout the front row as Williams did in 2014? I’m not so sure. It looks like that would be as a result of problems for one or both of the Mercedes, however, it would make for a fantastic Sunday it the front row wasn’t an all silver affair.