The first and probably only ever Styrian Grand Prix didn’t prove to have the excitement of last weeks race at The RedBull Ring but it was still an entertaining race and again produced some sublime performances to talk about.
Saturday qualifying was in fact where most of the excitement happened as the weather gods sent monsoon like conditions for most of the day. Any threat of quali being cancelled or postponed ended when the race director decided that the track was safe after the rain had stopped for a period, although as the cars took to the track the heavens opened again. Formula One deserves some credit here for not calling off the action as the conditions were marginal and the red flag has been shown before in similar circumstances. F1 definitely made the right call though as we were treated to some incredible displays of driving and car control. No big accidents happened and the best drivers in the world proved their worth.
Heroes they all were that afternoon but none more so than Lewis Hamilton. He and Verstappen had been trading the top time through all three sessions but Hamilton’s pole lap was 1.2 seconds faster than the Dutchman. Some question Hamilton’s success because he has the best car (not me I should say) but no one was in any doubt of the Brit’s talent on Saturday as he drove quite possibly the lap of his life. Another stand out performer was George Russell in the Williams who finished in 12th, which would become 11 on sunday as Charles LeClerc in the Ferrari was given a three place penalty for blocking Kyvat.
On race day the sky was clear and the beautiful Austrian mountains were bathed in sunshine and if RedBull were going to score a home win they would have to do it the hard way. Versatppen choose to start the race on the soft tyres however, as did the whole of the top seven on the grid, so there would be no contrary strategy as RedBull had wanted to try last weekend. The team maybe feeling that the Mercs would have too much pace on softs to make the mediums worth trying. On this RedBull were probably right as even on the soft tyres Max could not hassle Hamilton. Max drove a drove a fine race and gave it his all but ultimately the car didnt have the pace of the Mercedes and he was to lose second to Bottas after the Finn stayed out 10 laps longer at the stops and caught the RedBull with fresher rubber latter in the race.
For the top three that was it, Lewis controlled the pace up front, Bottas consolidated his win last week by finishing second and Verstappen was a clear third, never coming under pressure from his team mate in fourth. In fact team mate Albon was so far behind Versatppen that the Dutchman was able to make a free pit-stop for fresh rubber late on to try and snatch fastest lap. The fact that there was such a difference in pace between the RedBull cars should be a little worrying for Albon. I believe he is very talented and has done a good job up till now but being that far off of Max wont be allowed to carry on for long, he must turn that around or face being under pressure by the bosses.
Verstappen’s dash for the fastest lap point was to no avail as Carlos Sainz in the McLaren got that so a third and fourth for the team from Milton Keynes was much improved after last weekend but will have left the team feeling a little underwhelmed I’m sure. The fact
Sainz’s team mate Norris again put on a late race charge and pounced on a damaged Perez at the last corner to take a creditable fifth to go with his podium from last week. A double points finish for McLaren in each race in Austria is a good start for that team as they continue their recovery and it shows that the financial troubles that the team faced as a result of the lock down have not dented their chances of a great season.
Racing point picked up a sixth and seventh place finish but it could have better, as mentioned above Perez finished the last lap with damage suffered when he clashed with Albon fighting for fourth place. Racing Point sit fourth in the teams championship only five points behind RedBull but I feel that they haven’t really achieved their potential with the car that they have yet.
Ricciardo and Kyat finished ninth and tenth to round out the top ten after a tight fight in the mid field. Renault I’m sure wont be happy with two points as they have a car that should be higher and yet again they only had one car make it to the end as Ocon, looking much stronger this weekend after a lackluster outing last time out retired om lap 26. As a team Renault need to be achieving more, especially so as the big news last week was that Fernando Alonso is rejoining the team next year on a three year contract.
That leaves us the Ferrari situation to discuss! Where do we start? The team had a miserable weekend. They again failed to get one car into Q2 and LeClerc’s penalty meant he started in 14th position, meaning he had a lot of ground to make up. This must have been on his mind on the first lap as he tried a frankly stupid move on team mate Vettel, bounched over the curb and took Vettel’s rear wing clean off. Both Ferrari’s returned to the pits, Vettel to retire and LecLerc to check the car, After going back out he was in again shortly as he had too much damage to the floor to continue. A very embarrassing end to the Grand Prix for the Italian team and LeClerc had to make a very public admission of guilt and apologize for his error.
Its not the first time the two team mates have made contact is it and although there was no malice in LeCerc’s mistake it is still not acceptable for a team to loose two cars in the same incident. One suspects team boss Mattia Binotto had very strong words with the driver corm Monaco in the Ferrari garage.
That incident though doesn’t and should’t hide the fact that Ferrari are lacking a lot of pace and are not able to compete with the top two teams. At this point, even with the updates that they fast tracked after last weekend they are not even matching McLaren and Racing Point. Much work needs to be done in Marenello and I cannot help but think that they should be focusing on the next rules cycle, although it has been put back a year that is their best chance to make a big step. Next year teams will be using this years cars again, albeit with some updates, and at the moment Ferrari need to steady the ship, strengthen all areas of the operation so that in the future they can be a force again. It may be painful going through that process and there will undoubtedly be pressure from the Italian media but Mercedes did this prior to 2014 and look where they are now. The future must be there focus and not quick fixes to their problems.
I finish with the Racing Point protest that has been put in by Renault, despite assurances they still believe that the similarities with last years Mercedes are more than just reverse engineering and clearly want to make a point of it. I’m not sure it will go anywhere but the protest has been deemed “admissable” by the race stewards and a ruling will be made when evidence has been collected. All we know at this point is that it relates to Racing Point’s front and rear brake ducts. Much will be spoken of this in the coming weeks I am sure be for now we wait to see what happens.
And this weekend we have another race to look forward to as the teams make their way to Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Having a race a week is great, after the long wait for the season to start this is any F1 fans dream.
For now I leave at that until next Mondays blog about the action from Hungary.
My F1 talk 