Lewis Hamilton smashes into barriers in Madring practice

It remains to be seen how bad the crash damage is, but at the very least missing a large chunk of practice time on a new track is likely to compromise Hamilton’s performance in qualifying, which takes place at 4pm local time (3pm UK time) today.

Hamilton dropped 76 points behind Mercedes’ championship leader Kimi Antonelli following his sixth-place finish at Monza last weekend, where he collided with team-mate Charles Leclerc on the opening lap.

After lengthy repairs to the barriers, the session finally got back underway only for Haas’ Bearman to lose control at Turn 10 and career backwards into the wall, sustaining major damage to the car. Fortunately, Bearman was unhurt. The incident brought an early end to proceedings.

The Madring has been described as a “car killer”. At the recent Formula 3 test, there were 19 red flags, three broken chassis, and various broken suspensions.

“It’s a crazy circuit,” said Mercedes driver George Russell. “I would [call] it, arguably, the most risky circuit of the whole calendar, because you have real high-speed corners, sort of Jeddah-esque, the walls are very close, so there’s no margin for error… but then you have other corners that are quite like Baku, where you’re coming from a high speed into a slow braking zone. You’re braking and turning at the same time. So locking the tyres is going to be easy. And if you lock up, you’re straight into the wall.”

On Friday there was a spectacular crash in F2 practice, Thai driver Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak losing control at the right-hander at Turn 19, and spinning backwards into the barriers, his car bursting into flames.