Hakim Danish produced one of the standout turnarounds of Friday practice at the Qatar Airways Grand Prix of Austria, transforming an anonymous morning session into a top-six afternoon at the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg.
Conditions for FP1 were unforgiving — just 10°C in the air, 14°C on the track surface, and 89% humidity — and Danish never quite found a rhythm in them. Across sixteen laps he posted a best of 1’42.760, set on his seventh timed lap, leaving him 2.165 seconds off session-topper David Almansa’s 1’40.595 and only 18th on the combined sheet. It was a session that looked, on paper, like a rider still searching for the setup and the feel of a new circuit.
Whatever changed between sessions, it worked. With the air warming, Danish went more than two and a half seconds quicker in the afternoon’s Practice session, setting a 1’40.289 on his eighth lap — a lap that stood up as his best of the day and lifted him to sixth on the combined timesheet, just 0.621 seconds off Almansa’s session-best 1’39.668. The margins at that point of the field were wafer-thin: Danish sat a mere 0.011 seconds behind fifth-placed Brian Uriarte, and 0.027 seconds ahead of Joel Esteban in seventh.
The improvement outpaced even his closest rival for comparison. AEON Credit teammate Ryusei Yamanaka also found time between sessions — climbing from 17th to 10th — but Danish’s jump was nearly double the positions gained, moving him clear of his teammate in the process.
A sixth-place finish in combined practice is a genuinely strong marker heading into qualifying, putting Danish comfortably inside the group that direct route into Saturday’s Qualifying 2 session, rather than having to fight through Q1 as he did a week earlier at San Marino.
Almansa’s afternoon benchmark, for context, came within three-hundredths of a second of Maximo Quiles’ 2025 all-time lap record at the Red Bull Ring (1’39.639) — a sign of just how quick the track was running by the end of the day, and how significant Danish’s own step forward really was against that backdrop.
Credit Photo : ZK Racing
