What went down in Spielberg yesterday on the return of F1 to Austria? Come with me below the fold to find out…

Mercedes back on top as Rosberg betters Hamilton in Austria, Williams shows strength with Bottas podium

After being outqualified by a newly resurgent Williams Martini Racing team on Saturday, Mercedes reasserted their authority in the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday. Tire strategy at the first change cost Williams a chance to battle it out with the Silver Arrows on even terms, as the Mercs of Rosberg and Hamilton pitted a lap earlier respectively for fresh rubber than Williams drivers Filipe Massa and Valtteri Botas. So while both teams had excellent pit stops it enabled the Mercedes to capture superior track position on the in and out laps that they would never relinquish. That left the race down to a familiar sight this season: Hamilton and Rosberg duking it out for supremacy. In the end, while both driver’s had to be careful of their brakes overheating on the very brake-heavy Red Bull Ring, it was Rosberg who claimed his 3rd victory of the season and expanded his lead over his teammate in the Drivers’ Championship to 29 points. Despite another storming drive from Lewis Hamilton to make up for his 9th place start on the grid, it’s likely that poor Qualifying effort cost him dearly on race day.

Bottas hung on for the last step on the Podium, outdoing his more senior teammate Felipe Massa, who finished 4th despite starting from Pole. Williams Martini showed strength and consistency throughout the weekend, as well as new found pit stop speed, to put themselves in this week’s lead for Best of the Rest. While that competition to see who can play second fiddle to Mercedes this year seems to change at each Grand Prix, it’s clear that Red Bull Racing had a big step backward at their putative home track. The reigning 4-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel had another awful race, suffering loss of drive that put him a lap down early on and eventually led to the team’s decision to retire when he wound up stuck clashing with nominal backmarkers. Teammate Daniel Ricciardo fared much better even though a poor start attempting to hang on to the outside of Turn 1 shuffled him backwards after a decent 5th place start on the grid. The young Aussie talent was able to salvage an 8th place finish with a ballsy pass around the outside of Nico Hulkenberg on the last lap of the race, relegating the German Force India driver to 9th. Sister team Scuderia Torro Rosso fared even worse with suspension failure KO’ing the impressive young Russian Daniil Kvyat and brake issues forcing Jean-Eric Vergne’s retirement.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso had his typical 5th place effort in the subpar chassis, while teammate Kimmi Raikkonen once again showed the difference between the two drivers in this year’s car by taking a lowly 10th, albeit the last points paying position. On the other end of the achievement spectrum, Force India’s Sergio Perez had a storming drive, leaping up to a 6th place finish after starting a penalty-induced 16th by extending his tire stints to near-superhuman lengths. One has to wonder what might have been had the FIA not deemed Perez responsible for the last lap crash with Massa two weeks ago in Montreal and applied that 5-grid spot penalty to the talented Mexican.

Kevin Magnussen had a strong 7th place finish for McLaren to round out the top 10. Despite the much-touted package of improvements debuting on the MP4 29 this weekend, Jenson Button could not come to grips with them in Austria and finished out of the points in 11th. If the 2014 season has essentially boiled down to Mercedes and Everyone Else it would appear that, with the improving performance of the Williams and Force India teams and the mediocre but steady results for Ferrari, McLaren is not even capable of staying in the conversation.

Top 10 finishers for the Austrian Grand Prix here:

Complete race results at Formula1.com.

As a final thought, the return to Austria for the first time in over a decade seemed a massive success. If the race was not quite the most exciting on track this year, it was certainly one of the most photogenic, with the camera loving the elevation changes, especially the hilly Start-Finish/Turn 1 complex. And fans flocked to the Red Bull Ring in droves, with the enthusiastic 100,000+ daily attendees adding a real frisson of excitement to the entire weekend. All around, it was an enjoyable event for nearly all F1 fans. Unless you were the Austrian Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz, that is, who saw both his teams score a paltry 4 points from 4 cars at the track which bears his company’s name.

The next Grand Prix is in two weeks at Silverstone, England — hope to see you then!