Max Verstappen returned to the Red Bull Ring for the second race in the double header of weekends at the Styrian circuit. Having already taken a commanding victory at the previous week’s Styrian Grand Prix, one wondered what opposition the Red Bull Honda driver might face at the second aptly named Austrian Grand Prix.

Pole position for the Dutch driver, never headed throughout the race and the fastest lap of the race says it all. If life was a dream then Verstappen was sailing along on cloud 9. While it was all sunshine and lollipops for Verstappen, it was a grey day for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Team with Lewis Hamilton missing out on the podium and falling further behind Verstappen in the hunt for the championship crown.

Verstappen pointed his car in the direction of second placed Lando Norris as the lined up on the grid and then simply maintained the line to snuff out any thought of a challenge from the McLaren driver on the run towards Turn 1. Sergio Perez headed the Mercedes-AMG Petronas cars of Hamilton and Bottas, while Daniel Ricciardo had made an excellent start to challenge George Russell for a place on the cusp of the Top 10.

The distractions of Norris and Perez for Hamilton gave Verstappen clear space and he duly pulled away from the rest of the field, he had already established a sizeable lead by Turn 3, but it was quickly negated after an incident for Esteban Ocon saw the introduction of the Safety Car.

Ocon had been locked in a battle for position with Antonio Giovinazzi to his right on the approach to Turn 3 and then found himself squeezed for space when Mick Schumacher suddenly appeared on his left. Contact with Giovinazzi resulted in suspension damage to the Alpine which then came to a stop of the edge of the circuit.

Racing resumed on lap 4 but not before Max Verstappen had backed the field up at the final corner, Sergio Perez came alongside Norris for a brief moment before the restart when caught out by Verstappen’s slow resumption. The second Red Bull Honda ranged up the outside of Norris at Turn 1 and ran wide over the kerbs at the exit of the corner. Rather than impede Perez the move gave him a better line for the downhill run towards Turn 3. The squabble between the pair saw Valtteri Bottas, who had moved ahead of Hamilton, make a half attempt at an ambitious move on Perez at the exit of the corner.

Perez tried the outside line once more at Turn 4 with unfortunate results for both himself and Norris. Norris maintained the racing line and edged the Red Bull Honda driver into the gravel at the exit of the corner. Perez stumbled back onto the track but had dropped to 10th immediately behind Daniel Ricciardo in the process.

“He pushed me off,” Perez radioed back to his team. The stewards also agreed and Norris later received a 5 second time penalty, which was duly served during his pitstop on lap 31. 

Hamilton took full advantage of the incident to pass teammate Bottas and close on Norris. By lap 10 Verstappen had edged out to a 3.7 second lead and Hamilton did not want to lose sight of the #33 Red Bull Honda that was slowly becoming a speck in the distance, but Norris was intent on maintaining his track position. By lap 20 Verstappen had almost doubled his lead as Hamilton finally found a way past his fellow Brit using DRS to complete the overtaking manoeuvre.

Moments later Lando Norris reported a possible issue with the rear end of Hamilton’s car, which was perhaps the first indication of the problem that beset the reigning world champion throughout the latter stages of the race.

“His rear brakes are on fire,” Norris radioed back to his team as he followed close behind the #44.

Daniel Ricciardo continued to gain places as those on the softer compound tyres dropped pace and peeled off for their first stops. On lap 18 the McLaren driver moved into 5th with a decisive overtake of Sebastian Vettel as Leclerc, Perez and Sainz began to form a queue behind the Aston Martin Cognizant entry. Ricciardo then pitted for the hard tyres on lap 30 and resumed in 12th, just behind Gasly as the two leading runners to have completed a mandatory pit stop.

Norris and Bottas completed their stop on the following lap and Bottas leapfrogged the McLaren driver as he sat stationary for is 5 second time penalty. It was a moment which may well have cost the British driver a 2nd place finish.

Hamilton was brought in for hard tyres on lap 32 in a strategy that was more focussed on maintaining his position than reducing the gap to race leader Verstappen. The Red Bull driver was instructed to pit on the following lap in a bid to avoid a potential hold up as he closed on a line of slower cars just ahead. He resumed over 29 seconds clear of Hamilton, with Bottas, Norris, Leclerc, Perez and Sainz all within striking distance.

Perez dropped behind Ricciardo after his stop on lap 33 and resumed his battle with Leclerc for what was 9th place at that time.

Hamilton’s woes continued to mount on lap 37 when his engineer asked Hamilton to avoid contact with the kerbs as the #44 had suffered damaged to the left rear aero package. At least the gap to Verstappen had come down to 16.5 seconds.

The battle between Perez and Leclerc reached boiling point on lap 41, with Leclerc close enough to challenge the Red Bull Honda driver for 8th place. Leclerc tried to move around the outside at Turn 4, just as Perez had done with Norris on the 4th lap of the race. Wheels locked as Perez maintained the racing line, which forced the Ferrari into the edge of the gravel.

Ricciardo’s progress had been somewhat stalled by Gasly in 6th place. The Alpha Tauri driver was on a two stop strategy and had been trying to stretch the life of some tired tyres. Gasly hugged the inside line at every opportunity, which forced the Australian to consider a move around the outside. After a cautious approach to one such attempt, which saw the McLaren driver back off as Gasly squeezed him for room. Ricciardo finally claimed 6th when Gasly made his second pitstop, but the delay had allowed Perez and also Leclerc to catch the McLaren once again.

Perez ran wide at the exit of Turn 3 on lap 47 as he closed on the Australian. Leclerc moved inside the Red Bull Honda and then tried a switchback move at Turn 4 which placed the Ferrari on the outside of Turn 5, where Perez once again squeezed Leclerc off the circuit. In light of the earlier penalty for Norris, Perez was given 5 second post race penalties for each incident, adding 10 seconds to his time at the end of the race. Yuki Tsunoda also received two time penalties for pitlane infringements, while Lance Stroll became the 4th driver to incur the wrath of the Race Stewards.

Verstappen was well in control of the race with 20 laps left to run. The focus was squarely on the battle for the minor places. Hamilton was nursing a wounded car with Bottas riding shotgun ahead of Norris in 3rd. The Finn had initially been instructed to maintain position, though that eventually changes when Norris came in range of the #77. Faced with the real prospect of Norris passing both Mercedes-AMG Petronas cars, Bottas was told that he was free to race Hamilton. Hamilton ceded 2nd place to Bottas on Lap 52. It took just 2 more laps for Norris to demote Hamilton to 4th with an inside pass at Turn 6.

Hamilton boxed for another set of hard tyres on lap 54 in an attempt to combat the aero deficiencies in has car, maintain 4th place and hopefully gain an extra point for the fastest lap in the race. Verstappen, who held the fastest lap to that point then stopped again on lap 60 for fresh hard compound tyres. The move may have been to ensure that the Dutch driver snared a race weekend treble, or it may also have been as a form of insurance to ensure that there was no repeat of his tyre issues in Baku.

Perez finally moved ahead of Ricciardo in the latter stages of the race and Leclerc attempted to do likewise on lap 58. An ambitious move almost saw contact as Leclerc locked a wheel in the Ferrari. It was the closest that he came to Ricciardo as he trailed by over 7ths of a second on lap 61 of 71. Teammate Carlos Sainz had caught the pair on much fresher medium rubber and swapped places with Leclerc under team orders. Ricciardo held on to 6th until the final lap, when Sainz swept past.

George Russell had hovered at the edge of the Top 10 for most of the race and was agonisingly close to his first point scoring finish for the Williams Mercedes Team. A late surge by Fernando Alonso saw Russell fall back to 11th place, where he would stay for the remainder of the race.

Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen collided on the last lap of the race while dicing for 12th place. The accident saw Vettel fail to finish and Raikkonen limp home in 16th. Neither of the former Ferrari teammates were prepared to judge the other, though Race Stewards lay the blame on the shoulders of the Alfa Romeo driver.

“I don’t know,” said Vettel to f1.com when asked what had happened. “I think it was a misunderstanding, so I’ll have a look and speak to him.”

Raikkonen was also unsure when quizzed by F1.com. “I don’t know, I have to see it,” he said. “Obviously our wheels touched and off we went. An unfortunate end but it didn’t change much, because we were both out of the points, but I’ll have to see it from the outside. I saw him there, but I don’t know how we ended up touching. I don’t know if I moved or he moved. I’ll have to see it.”

Verstappen went on to take the chequered flag 17.712 second clear of Valtteri Bottas in 2nd, with Lando Norris 3rd. Lewis Hamilton was 4th ahead of Carlos Sainz, who gained a place after Sergio Perez’s post race penalties. Perez was classified in 6th from Daniel Ricciardo, Charles Leclerc, Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso.

“To win again at home at the Red Bull Ring is just incredible,” Verstappen said to Red Bull Media. “I expected it to be good, but not this good, and the car was on rails. It was really nice to drive and the pace was incredible on both tyre compounds. I could push and also look after the tyres which is exactly how you want it to be and I could extend my gap lap after lap. Just like everyone else we learnt from last weekend and we optimised the car even more by improving the set-up. It’s actually hard to put into words because it was so enjoyable to drive and the weekend was the best it could be, so let’s hope we can carry on in the same way. It’s a great reward for everyone in the Team and it was also very nice to have Honda represented on the podium by Tanabe. The fans were also incredible all weekend, so much orange in the grandstands and it’s just great to see people back and enjoying Formula One at the track. There are of course a lot of difficult races coming up and Silverstone will be interesting with the Sprint Race to mix things up. But for now, I’m really happy with the way the whole race went and you don’t often get this type of race, so we all have to enjoy it.”

Lando Norris was elated with another podium in Austria after a career best effort in qualifying.

“I’m extremely happy with today’s result. Another podium and a lot of points for us as a team. A very good day,” Norris said to McLaren Media. “The only thing that’s disappointing is the fact we could’ve been P2, but at the same time that’s also a big positive. Our pace today was extremely strong, especially in the second stint against very fast cars and against Mercedes. A lot of positives and altogether a very good day – a huge thank you to the whole team for their hard work and giving me such a great car. We’ll keep pushing to take this momentum into our home race at Silverstone in a couple of weeks.”

Fellow McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo was also much happier after his P13 in qualifying the day before.

“It was a nice day for the team with a podium for Lando and getting into the points for me,” Daniel told McLaren Media. “That was good. I just had a pretty fun race. It was busy, trying to attack and defend. It’s one I could enjoy and take some fulfilment from. The defence was tough. I was trying everything I could, every trick in the book to stay ahead. I think I held on as long as I could and Sainz was just a bit quick at the end with a fresher tyre – but I can’t complain with the race and the result. A better day. Happy to have finished the first triple-header of the season. As fun as the triple-headers are, they’re tiring. Everyone can enjoy a break now. We’ll look forward to Silverstone and the new format there. It should be interesting!”

Conversely, it was not the result that Lewis Hamilton had been expecting. The result saw Hamilton complete his fifth Grand Prix of the year without a race victory. A statistic not faced by the Brit in almost five years of racing.

“I already said before the race, it would be very hard to beat Max of course, but it’s obviously frustrating to lose so much downforce on the rear of the car and not be able to hold on to second place,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “A lot of points lost today. I would have been second, when all of a sudden, it obviously broke. It would have been an easy second generally, but I was not able to catch those guys ahead. I wasn’t going over the kerb any more than anyone else so I have no idea where it could have happened. But there’s a lot of damage”

Pos	Driver		Time	Pts
1		M. Verstappen Red Bull·#33	1:23:54.543	26
2		V. Bottas Mercedes·#77	+17.973s	18
3		L. Norris McLaren·#4	+20.019s	15
4		L. Hamilton Mercedes·#44	+46.452s	12
5		C. Sainz Jr. Ferrari·#55	+57.144s	10

6		S. Pérez Red Bull·#11	+57.915s	8
7		D. Ricciardo McLaren·#3	+60.395s	6
8		C. Leclerc Ferrari·#16	+61.195s	4
9		P. Gasly AlphaTauri·#10	+61.844s	2
10		F. Alonso Alpine·#14	+1 Lap	1
11		G. Russell Williams·#63	+1 Lap	0
12		Y. Tsunoda AlphaTauri·#22	+1 Lap	0
13		L. Stroll Aston Martin·#18	+1 Lap	0
14		A. Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo·#99	+1 Lap	0
15		K. Räikkönen Alfa Romeo·#7	+1 Lap	0
16		N. Latifi Williams·#6	+1 Lap	0
17		S. Vettel Aston Martin·#5	DNF	0
18		M. Schumacher Haas·#47	+2 Laps	0
19		N. Mazepin Haas·#9	+2 Laps	0
20		E. Ocon Alpine·#31	DNF	0

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