Ian Fergusson (BBC Weather) on Twitter:, external The circuit radar shows light showers in vicinity and these can be expected periodically through today.

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer

"It goes from bad to worse for McLaren, for whom the low of the Canadian Grand Prix, a tale of penalties and retirements, has now been followed this weekend by both drivers getting huge grid penalties for engine changes.

"Fernando Alonso's 20-place penalty was already clear on Friday, but on Saturday morning it emerged that Jenson Button would be hit, too - but 25 places for him, after Honda decided to change the whole engine.

Image source, Getty Images

"On track, it was little better on Friday. Both cars did hardly any running, which was a particular frustration for the team given that Fernando Alonso is running a new shorter nose, in which the team have a lot of hope. But electrical issues in P1 and then a precautionary stop in P2 after Jenson Button suffered spark plug problems meant Alonso did only one run with the new parts.

"'We have new engines so better to run safe and investigate the problem and have no issues on Saturday,' Alonso said. 'Unfortunately we lost a bit of time because we need time to optimise the new package. We knew the goal, which was to have a clear answer on the aero package and changes we bought here. We have to use this weekend as a test. We have to sacrifice some weekends. This is one, and there are more to come, but if we learn things that will be very useful it's OK. Today we didn't manage to, so tomorrow we have to recover time.'

"Alonso said the new package was promising - he felt more grip - but that he needed more time to judge it definitively. As for Button, he said he was also likely to take 'penalties' as a result of engine changes, but there is no official confirmation of that as yet."

Image source, Reuters

Hello and welcome to live text commentary of final practice and qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix.

We are set for a great battle in qualifying later between the Mercedes drivers and those at Ferrari, for whom Sebastian Vettel was fastest in practice on Friday.

Vettel was 0.011 seconds quicker than Nico Rosberg, with the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen third, two tenths further back.

Qualifying begins at 13:00 BST, but before then we have third and final practice, starting at 09:00.

But before all that, we have yet more bonkers grid-penalty news to impart.

"The problem is that, for the large part, people watching the television don't understand all of what is going on. They might think it is easy to drive the cars but I can assure you it is not."

Lewis Hamilton has never spoken a truer word.

Just days after making these comments in is his regular BBC Sport column, the Mercedes driver set about emphatically proving his point with a scrappy performance in Friday practice for this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

Image source, Reuters

Hamilton's car went off track three times in FP2, the Mercedes struggling for grip in cool conditions as he finished down in fifth place.

That said, Hamilton struggled badly on Friday in Canada two weeks ago and things turned out OK for him on that occasion, so let's not write him off just yet, eh?