The Austrian Grand Prix looked like a close battle between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc — briefly.
A virtual safety car gifted Ferrari an opportunity to ensure Leclerc would stick in Verstappen’s pit stop window and force Red Bull Racing to consider its strategic options.
The result was Max Verstappen’s streak of laps in the lead dating back to Miami had to be broken at 248 — the third longest streak of consecutive laps led behind Alberto Ascari and Ayrton Senna.
Watch the Formula 1 British Grand Prix 2023 live and ad-break free in racing on Kayo Sports on Monday, 10 July, at 12:00am AEST. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >
But that sacrifice wasn’t a sign that Red Bull Racing was adapting to Ferrari’s challenge.
In fact it was quite the opposite.
Red Bull Racing was so confident in its pace that it simply stuck to its pre-race strategy and won all the same.
The closeness through the middle of the grand prix was only an illusion.
This was another Verstappen masterclass in domination.
VERSTAPPEN’S MAKES MASSIVE FLEX
You’ll struggle to find a bigger flex this season than Verstappen’s final pit stop.
The Dutchman was leading the race by some 24 seconds, comfortably within his usual window of supremacy.
Taking the chequered flag was guaranteed to extend his championship lead beyond three clear race wins.
But Verstappen wasn’t content with just 25 points.
He argued with his team to make a late stop for fresh softs to snatch the bonus point for fastest lap from teammate Sergio Pérez.
The team resisted — there was no need to take the risk over a single point. But Verstappen insisted, and the team relented.
Max & Red Bull perform alpha pit stop | 01:04
It was a high-risk gamble. A slow pit stop, a mistake changing tyres, speeding in the pit lane, anti-stall — any number of things could’ve seen his lead embarrassingly wiped out in pursuit of a point.
But he stopped perfectly on his marks. His mechanics were clean. His lap was perfect. The fastest lap was his.
The result was a score clean sweep for the Dutchman, who added the full 34 points to his tally for the weekend at Red Bull Racing’s spiritual home race to take his championship lead to 81.
You can fill in your own reasons as to why Verstappen felt the urge to take such an unnecessary risk.
There was the spectre of Sergio Pérez’s challenge in the sprint the day before, which clearly rankled him, and the early signs of the Mexican returning to form.
There was Ferrari’s upgraded car appearing to take a clear step ahead of the other frontrunners to take its place as Red Bull Racing’s closest — albeit still distant — challenger.
There was the loss of his streak of laps led thanks to a badly timed virtual safety car.
There’s also the fact that Verstappen’s season has been so dominant that he’s completely devoid of rivals, leaving him to create his own challenges to overcome.
Whatever the reason, it was an enormous flex from his position of absolute dominance at the top of Formula 1 as he barrels towards his third world championship.
He can do what he likes. Everyone else are spectators.
FERRARI TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD — BUT STRATEGY IS STILL LACKING
Verstappen’s almost embarrassing reserve of speed took some of the sheen off what looked like a considerable step forward for Ferrari, which appears to have solved some of its race-pace problems.
The softest tyres are used in Austria, and the circuit is relatively high energy. It’s the sort of place that should have punished the SF-23 and its year-long problems with tyre consumption.
But the car was consistent — very consistent — on both the medium and the hard and on low fuel and high fuel.
It was a perfectly acceptable performance in an upgraded car that suggests the Scuderia might finally have figured out its Achilles heel.
But of course it wouldn’t be a Ferrari result without some caveats.
Though Sainz was strong in the damp on Saturday, Leclerc hasn’t been able to meld his driving style to the car when it’s wet. It was only in the dry that he was up to speed.
And even then he seemed to lack a little relative to Sainz, particularly early in the race.
It’s an open question whether Ferrari could have secured a double podium finish had it played its cards better when the Spaniard was pressuring the Monegasque for second place in the opening stint.
He was clearly the faster driver at the time and all weekend in race trim, and not allowing him past bit him hard during the virtual safety car, when he was forced to wait in a double stack to change tyres, which cost him around five seconds.
It also forced him into a long middle stint, leaving him vulnerable to Pérez late in the race.
“Obviously frustrated with the final outcome after having such a strong pace on the medium [tyres], feeling also like I was playing the team game and not getting rewarded with a good result,” Sainz said, per the F1 website.
“It leaves you always with a sour feeling. I’ve been very strong today, very quick, very fast, good overtaking, good defending, but in the end P4 is not what I want.”
But Sainz also cops some blame for losing third, having been penalised five seconds for exceeding track limits more than three times through the race. He finished 4.1 seconds behind Pérez.
So some points were lost, and the team is still 14 points behind Aston Martin.
The bigger picture is positive, however. More races are needed for verification, but the Austrian Grand Prix was a very positive one for Ferrari’s journey back to the front.
NORRIS MAKES MASSIVE MCLAREN STATEMENT IN FIFTH
Lando Norris has always liked the Red Bull Ring.
Excepting 2022, he’s never qualified lower than sixth and has an average starting position of fourth.
Seventh is the lowest he’s finished in a grand prix in Austria — and he’s driven some pretty ordinary cars in recent times — and two of his six podiums have come in the Styrian hills.
But even so this weekend felt different.
If you had to put your finger on it, it was lap 28.
Norris had slipped from fourth to as sixth in the opening phase of the race after taking his first pit stop behind the virtual safety car and behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.
Pre-race expectations had been that the McLaren would naturally fall behind Mercedes and Aston Martin by the end of the race, leaving him to scrap for minor points.
But instead the opposite was true. Having dropped back in the opening laps, Norris’s car moved forward.
On lap 28 Norris closed onto the back of Hamilton at turn 3 and slipstreamed him into turn 4, snatching what was then fourth place.
Eventually the recovering Pérez demoted him to fifth at the flag, but no Mercedes nor Aston Martin driver was able to threaten him before the end of the race.
The fifth place was on merit, ahead of the works Mercedes team and a fellow Mercedes customer — a remarkable turnaround in form for a team that’s barely been worthy of points so far this season.
Norris said: “Surprisingly it was better than I was expecting. So, a good surprise, definitely helped us achieve the result today.
“The upgrade has definitely helped us take a big step forward. So, I’m very happy. A good amount of points and a good reward for the team.”
Of course there are asterisks. Mercedes was having an obviously underwhelming day. Aston Martin could’ve finished higher had Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll stopped earlier behind the virtual safety car rather than the caution period ending while they were in pit lane.
But just being in the mix — or even being fractionally behind — is significant progress.
Consider too that the best Alpine of Pierre Gasly, the team’s presumed natural rival, was 30 seconds behind and suddenly there’s much intrigue about how the team will do next weekend in Silverstone, where the car will be further upgraded and Oscar Piastri will get access to the same parts.
Piastri had a “difficult” day, he said, to finish 16th after penalties were applied. Early wing damage from a Magnussen shunt cruelled his race, but he said: “A shame there, but I think even without that, our pace wasn’t very good. Obviously, the positives, a very good finish for Lando and the team, so I’m looking forward to getting those parts next week.”
MERCEDES, ASTON WALLOW IN BEST-OF-THE-REST BATTLE
“Lewis, the car is bad, we know, please drive it.”
This intervention from Toto Wolff after Lewis Hamilton’s complaints from the cockpit could’ve been about the last 18 months, but in this instance it was about the team’s mystifying lack of pace.
Austria was a hard comedown from the positivity of the Canadian Grand Prix, where Mercedes thought it had turned a corner.
It never really got things together in Spielberg. It never looked close to challenging Red Bull Racing or Ferrari, and it was decisively adrift of Aston Martin too.
“It’s a bruising day, I would say, because we had such a good upward trend,” Wolff told Sky Sports.
“There was no pace and no inkling why yet.”
That lack of understanding is the biggest concern considering difficulties getting to grips with its car has been Mercedes’s biggest weakness over the last 18 months. Unexpected new problems would be a real blow.
But Wolff might at least take some solace from Aston Martin also faring unexpectedly poorly.
Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll had their races ruined by a slow reaction to the virtual safety car. By the time they pitted, the caution period was ending, which meant the benefit of the early stop was no longer counterweighted by the reduced pit-lane time loss.
Their grands prix spiralled from there, constantly out of sync with the rest of the top 10. The team ended up marginally outscored by Mercedes.
But it’s also fair to say that for the second time this season Aston Martin was strangely off the pace, distant from its usual podium-getting position.
It’s clear now — it’s been clear for a long time — that neither Aston nor Mercedes is catching Red Bull Racing this season, at least in a substantive way.
But on a day Ferrari re-emerged as Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger and McLaren potentially took a big step forward, both teams needed to show up and defend their territory.
Off races like these only feed the narrative that neither is permanently established at the front.
HONOURABLE MENTION: SERGIO PÉREZ
Pérez eventually had the sort of weekend he needed to start shaking off his form slump.
Starting 15th was never going to be ideal, but racing up to third is the sort of recovery his machinery deserved. Second probably would’ve been within reach had Leclerc not had the benefit of the cheap VSC stop.
That he achieved all this while suffering from the flu is impressive — and could explain the false note of his Friday qualifying flop.
At 81 points down it’s too late for the title, but we might at least allow ourselves to hope for some more competition for victories.
DISHONOURABLE MENTION: TRACK LIMITS
It’s up to the drivers to race between the white lines, and several were slapped with five-second penalties for failing to do so over the course of the race.
It’s messy and frustrating, but keeping the car on the track is a fundamental part of driving. This circuit might pose particular difficulties for various reasons, but these are supposed to be the 20 best drivers in the world.
That said, having more than 100 track limits infringements by the end of the race looks silly.
And it was impractical too. It proved impossible for race control to keep track of punishments.
After the race the stewards were forced to acknowledge several breaches had flown under the radar and some penalties may have been missed as a result.
Considering even just 100 infringements would mean the stewards were making a track limits judgment every 51 seconds, you can understand how some might’ve slipped through the net.
The sport must come to a cleaner solution before next season.