The hills are alive with the sound of engines. Two weeks on from the outskirts of Barcelona, F1 has left city life behind for a dedicated circuit in rural Austria and brought with it the makings of a multi-team title race.

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Catalonia showed off the Ferrari’s improvements while the reliability problems of the Mercedes engine has been a concern for the eponymous team and also McLaren. The Briton won from second on the grid; OK, Kimi Antonelli had a small power problem in qualifying, but Hamilton was 0.064sec behind his compatriot George Russell in the pole-sitting Mercedes, suggesting that there was little to choose between their drives.

Antonelli suffered the kind of bad luck that has generally been afflicting Russell, losing power when second, so Hamilton took the full 25 points out of the championship leader’s advantage, cutting it to 41. Russell claimed that second place that seemed set for Antonelli, so at least took 18 out of his teammate’s lead, but he will surely be concerned about his former Mercedes teammate’s reinvigoration.

The past few years have been a slog for Hamilton, ever since the soon-to-be-former race director handed Max Verstappen the 2021 world title in Abu Dhabi. Swapping Mercedes for Ferrari for 2025 made matters worse on the face of it, with Hamilton’s only podium finishes coming in sprint races. Now he has once again taken the top step in a main race, and at a stage of the season with all to play for.

Still, in practice it has been Mercedes’s weekend. Antonelli led Russell, just, in FP1, followed by Oscar Piastri for McLaren and Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, with Hamilton fifth. Antonelli again led FP2, but ahead of Piastri and Lando Norris for McLaren and Verstappen, with Hamilton again fifth and Russell down in sixth. But Mercedes’s Briton was fastest in Saturday’s FP3, ahead of Antonelli by 0.038. Hamilton, though, was up to third.

Join me from 2.30 BST for the buildup to qualifying to see if Hamilton can continue to put pressure on the Mercedes with a challenge for pole position at the Red Bull Ring.