Lewis Hamilton issued an apology to Kimi Antonelli from the cockpit during FP2 at the Austrian Grand Prix after the Mercedes driver was forced to take avoiding action. The legendary Brit was drifting over to the racing line on the approach to Turn Four while on a cooldown lap, while Antonelli was charging from behind. The Italian teenager slammed on the brakes and was forced to take to the run-off area just before the 50-metre braking board to avoid a crash.

Antonelli, who had already been held up earlier in the session, voiced his frustration over the radio. Hamilton responded by pulling alongside the Mercedes rookie on the corner exit and throwing a hand up to apologise. “Man, I couldn’t see Antonelli at all,” the Brit told race engineer Riccardo Adami on the radio.

The stewards were forced to note the incident, which was lodged as a potential moment of impeding. The session as a whole was a challenging one for Hamilton, who struggled to extract pace from his SF-25 or find a comfortable rhythm.

This followed a turbulent FP1 for the Brit, who lost time after his Ferrari engineers were forced to address a gearbox problem. There were also difficulties on the other half of the garage, with rookie Dino Beganovic unable to enjoy much track time during his sophomore practice appearance.

Ferrari had hoped that an upgrade package, delivered ahead of the Austrian GP weekend, would make the seven-time world champion more competitive. For the first time in Hamilton’s career, he navigated the first 10 race weekends of the season without a podium finish to his name.

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“Firstly, I am happy that we have an upgrade,” he said when asked about the package on Thursday. “It is always exciting to get new pieces on the car. So I am really grateful for everyone working hard to bring them, but we don’t really know the actual effect it is going to have.”

Hamilton doesn’t believe the changes will have an extreme effect on his performance, though. “I’m focused more on changes in the background, foundation-building stuff that we need to put in place in order to have a better 2026,” he continued. “You always want upgrades, so I’m grateful for every little bit, whether it’s a small or big piece.

“What I would say is, don’t expect much change. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll find something that we didn’t expect, but again, we don’t really know, so we will find out tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a step forward in the right direction, and I think that’s the most important thing, that we are moving forward.”