There’s a rhythm to Friday practice. The demands of each circuit are different, the experiments change from week to week but the basic format remains the same. This week, however, was a little different. We already had 350 laps completed on the circuit and with a strong expectation that FP3 would be rained-off, there was a little more willingness to try new things on Friday. This was common up and down the pitlane – which made practice actually quite difficult: there’s not a lot of room at the Red Bull Ring, and when half the teams are trying quali sims and the other half are lumbering around with a full tank of gas, things can get a little awkward.

Saturday morning, as predicted, was wet. Cloud dropped onto the hills around the circuit, grounding the medical helicopter, effectively ending any chance of running – but even without that, the standing water and streams running across the asphalt would have prevented anyone putting in a time. It’s an unusual period in the garage. The cars are made ready on the off-chance – but once they’re prepped, there’s nothing to do. Until Race Control formally calls the session off, the mechanics, usually flat-out, can’t do anything other than drink tea, tidy their kit and watch the rain. It’s strange for everyone.

Qualifying got underway 46 minutes late – but the big surprise was that it got underway at all. Conditions where what might genuinely be called ‘marginal’. The onboard cameras show a little of what it’s like to drive in those conditions – though the cameras are mounted higher than the driver and continually clean their lens. The drivers are essentially blind, driving as much with the sensations being transmitted through their seat as they are with their eyes. Lando did a great job to qualify sixth; Carlos did an unbelievable one to bag third. The atmosphere for the rest of Saturday afternoon was buoyant.

The key decision in our race came on lap 61 when Carlos took one for the team and allowed Lando through. With younger, fresher tyres, Lando had more pace for the last 10 laps and a better chance of catching and attacking the cars ahead. He duly did just that, passing Ricciardo and Stroll, and collecting the bonus scalp of Pérez just before the line to finish fifth. It turned what might have been a mediocre weekend into a very good one – and a lot of credit goes to Carlos, who simply asked where and when, giving Lando the maximum time to get on with his chase. Considering he took P5 just metres before the line, that proved more vital than anyone realised.

Like London buses, you wait 16 months for a fastest lap point and then two come along at once. For the second week in a row, McLaren went purple on the lap chart. Over its first season, the fastest lap point was more often than not acquired by strategy rather than natural consequence, allowing any of the top 10 with a decent gap to the car behind and no expectation of catching the car in front to pit late, strap on Soft tyres and do a flat-out low fuel, qualifying-style lap. Before today we’ve never had the gap – and possibly not the pace, but the planets aligned for Carlos in the Styrian Grand Prix. 1:05.619 on lap 68 of 71 was his first-ever F1 fastest lap.

Lando finished lap 69 in eighth place, lap 70 in seventh and lap 71 in fifth. By the end, Will Joseph, was exhorting him to greater speed more like a cornerman in a heavyweight title fight than a professional race engineer. It’d be easy to describe it as a unique situation – except for the fact it happened pretty much the same way seven days earlier. That in itself is absolutely remarkable.

This early in the season, having sampled only a single circuit, it’s a little early to start making pronouncements about the competitiveness of the field – but even if no-one wants to rush to judgements, every team starts adopting a posture, gauging their own competitiveness, looking carefully at who their rivals over the next few months might be. What was interesting on Sunday evening in Spielberg was quite how vague those opinions remain. But a five-hour drive to the east of Spielberg lies Budapest and a very different sort of circuit at the Hungaroring. The picture will be a little clearer once we start running again on Friday.