Max Verstappen extended his lead in the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship with a flag to flag victory in the Styrian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton shadowed the Red Bull Honda throughout the race but was unable to mount any serious challenge for the lead. After his failed attempt to start from second gear during practice and subsequent three place grid penalty, Valtteri Bottas finally had a reason to smile as he moved past Sergio Perez and Lando Norris for the final place on the podium.

Verstappen made the ideal start from pole position and immediately moved towards the centre of the track for the steep ascent in the run towards Turn 1. Norris and Perez ran side by side with the McLaren squeezed over the kerbs at the exit of the corner. Pierre Gasly’s race came to a premature end after the Alpha Tauri became sandwiched between Fernando Alonso’s Alpine and the Ferrari Charles Leclerc. The Alpha Tauri and Ferrari made contact mid corner and then hit a second time as the straightened for the run towards Turn 2. Leclerc’s front wing sliced into Gasly’s left rear tyre which pre-empted a left rear suspension issue. Both drivers were forced back to the pitlane, Leclerc for hard compound tyres and a new front wing, while the Alpha Tauri was pushed back into the garage.

Daniel Ricciardo found himself in a similar situation at the opening corner with George Russell on his right and Yuki Tsunoda to his left. Ricciardo eased off the throttle to avoid contact as the two cars streaked past on either side of the McLaren. Ricciardo regathered, passed Tsunoda for 9th and began to close on Russell in 8th.

By lap 7 Verstappen held a 2.7 second lead over Hamilton, with Norris a further 4.6 second behind in 3rd. Perez, Bottas, Stroll, Alonso, Russell, Ricciardo and Tsunoda were the top ten runners at that point in time. Leclerc had moved into 18th place, ahead of Nicholas Latifi after his unscheduled stop at the end of the opening lap.

Ricciardo’s early progress, where he moved from 13th on the grid to 9th, all came undone on lap 8 when the Australian reported a sudden loss of power from the Mercedes engine in his McLaren. It was soon rectified with a mode change activated on his steering wheel, but the damage had been done. Daniel soon found himself back in 13th place after Tsunoda, Sainz, Vettel and Raikkonen all moved ahead as Ricciardo and the McLaren team resolved the issue. It all but ended his race as he sat behind Raikkonen with the Alfa Romeo shod on the hard compound tyre. Ricciardo was unable to use the advantage of DRS to pass and an undercut was unlikely to work towards the end of the race given Raikkonen’s tyre selection.

Lando Norris’ hopes for a podium began to fade as the race laps ticked over to double figures. Segio Perez sailed ahead with the benefit of DRS on lap 10 and Valtteri Bottas relegated the McLaren driver to 5th one lap later.

George Russell had sat comfortably inside the top 10 and looked to be in the hunt for his first World Championship points haul with Williams as the race approached one-third distance. A call from his engineer that the race strategy had moved to ‘Plan B’ was the first indication of an issue for the team, one which became more apparent when Russell made his pit stop on lap 26. As the tyres were quickly changed to a new set of the hard, white walled tyre, two crew members worked in and around the right sidepod. Sky Sports suggested that it was an issue with the pneumatic pressure as the stop lumbered past the 30 second mark. Despite the best efforts of his crew, Russell eventually returned to the garage and retired on lap 39 of 71.

Sergio Perez was another to encounter a longer than anticipated pit stop on lap 27. An issue with the left rear saw the Red Bull Honda stationary for more than 12 seconds, which placed Bottas in 3rd after his stop on lap 28.

There was no repeat for Max Verstappen when he made his stop for the hard tyre on lap 30. The usual Red Bull standard of a 2 second stop saw the Dutch driver return to the circuit with a 4.9 second gap to Hamilton, who had already completed his stop, in 2nd.

Lando Norris competed 32 laps on his soft tyres before a move to the hard tyre for the run towards the finish and returned to the track just ahead of teammate Ricciardo, who had yet to make his stop in 8th place. Ricciardo ran much longer on his first set of mediums and ran as high a 7th before his stop for the hard tyres on lap 43. The Australian returned to the circuit in 14th, now behind Raikkonen and Leclerc with both cars ahead running on the medium tyres.

As the race moved towards the 50 lap mark, Verstappen’s lead had opened up to 6.6seconds. Lewis Hamilton asked his engineer about the straight line speed difference between himself and the leader. He answered that Hamilton was losing around 2.5ths of a second per lap. While little could be done to alter the situation for the current race, Hamilton was already looking ahead to the next event, the second of the double-header weekends at the same venue.

With the gap between Verstappen and Hamilton seemingly unsurmountable, attention focussed on the battle for 3rd between Bottas and Perez. The gap fluctuated at around 2 seconds on lap 49 with Bottas finding difficulty in maintaining the temperature, and thus the condition, of his tyres. Perez edged ever closer to the #77 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 as the race began to count down.

Red Bull then gambled on a late stop for Perez. The Mexican into the pits on lap 56 for another set of medium tyres. He emerged 21 seconds behind Bottas and soon set faster sector times than anyone in the race and took the fastest lap from Hamilton. By Lap 69 of 71 Perez was just 3.8 seconds from 3rd place.

Charles Leclerc’s recovery was the other point of interest as the Ferrari driver, now running the medium tyre, sat on the cusp of a points scoring position. He then managed to pick off ex-teammate Vettel, then Tsunoda, Alonso and Stroll in the final laps to finish just behind Carlos Sainz in 7th.

Lewis Hamilton found himself in danger of a track limit violation after advice from his engineer on lap 59 and dropped further ground as he took a more conservative approach to the final corner. He made a second stop for the soft tyre on lap 70 in a last ditch effort to salvage an extra point for the fastest lap of the race, a feat Hamilton just managed to achieve as the chequered flag came out.

Verstappen held a 38 second lead as he crossed the line, the Dutchman slowed to a crawl as he moved past the Red Bull Honda pit bay and briefly smoked the rear tyres of his car. Lewis Hamilton finished 2nd, 26 seconds clear of Valtteri Bottas, who just managed to fend off Sergio Perez as they battled amongst lapped traffic. Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso and Yuki Tsunoda completed the top 10. Daniel Ricciardo ended the race in 13th, behind former World Champions Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel.

“I am super happy to win here and doing it at home at the Red Bull Ring is always so special,” Max Verstappen told Red Bull Racing Media. “I had a really enjoyable race, the car was working well and I always enjoy driving on this track.  I just focused on my own race, concentrating on hitting the apexes in the places I wanted to, looking after the tyres and it worked out well. You never know how competitive or how close it’s going to be on a Sunday and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting it to be like it was today as the long run pace between the two teams was very closely matched all weekend. Overall, we’ve had a really positive weekend and of course it’s not going to be completely the same next week. Everyone else will also learn from this race so we will of course try and do even better and keep improving ourselves so we can stay ahead. It’s a whole Team effort so thank you very much to everyone here and back at the factory for another great win today.”

‘It was a bit of a lonely race really,” Lewis Hamilton said during the race winners interview. “I was trying to keep up with those guys, but the speed they have. They’ve obviously made some big improvements over the last couple of races and it was impossible to keep up. I don’t know where we are losing all the time, but their long runs seem to be better and they are able to keep on putting out those laps and obviously on the straights we lose a lot.

I try not to concern myself with it, but obviously they are faster. There’s not a lot that I can do in that respect, just got to keep trying to do the best job I can do each weekend. We need to find some performance, we need an upgrade of some sort but I don’t know where. Whether it is just the rear wing or the operation in the engine wherever it may be, but we’ve got to find some performance from somewhere.”

Daniel Ricciardo felt that there were some positives to be gained from the Styrian Grand Prix and holds hope for an improved performance at the same venue in a week’s time.

“The start was great, we got up to ninth, put ourselves in a really good position on the Medium tyre and the race was looking up from there, and then we lost power,” Ricciardo told McLaren Media. “We were able to fix it on the steering wheel, but everything we gained, we then lost, and we were back where we started. After that, it was difficult to make moves being in dirty air. I feel we should’ve been fifth and sixth again today as we were last week. We’ll reset over the next few days and come back again and make it happen next week – hopefully our luck turns.”

Photos: f1.com

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