Verstappen cruises to dominant win at Austrian GP for third straight victory; Bottas P2 & Norris P3; Hamilton finishes off the podium in P4 after suffering curb damage

Red Bull’s peerless top pilot Mex Verstappen proved one again why this year’s title fight is not going to be another walkover for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. With the grandstands finally packed with fans, the vocal majority of them wearing Dutch Orange, Verstappen converted his second consecutive pole at the Red Bull Ring, the team’s eponymous home track, into his second consecutive victory, swanning away from the rest of the top contenders easily and dominating Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix in effortless style. It marked a clean sweep by the young Dutch Master of the so called “triple header” of three consecutive races on three consecutive weekends during this busy part of the season. Verstappen has also won four of the last five rounds and if not for a blown tire late in the going at Baku, the Red Bull man would be looking at six on the trot. It’s worth noting yet again that Hamilton failed to take advantage of the Dutchman’s DNF in Azerbaijan when Lewis muffed his break bias settings on the late restart and frittered away a sure podium if not the win, something that could well prove to be the turning point in 2021’s F1 championship and the moment that signaled the end of Mercedes’ run of seven consecutive championships in the turbo hybrid era.

In fact, Hamilton failed to maximize his points on this day, as well, coming home off the podium in P4 after suffering with rear floor damage from running too hard over the deceptively tricky sausage curbs at the Red Bull Ring. While nothing terminal, the damage compromised Hamilton’s pace to such a degree that the Mercedes brain trust made the rare decision to swap second driver Valtteri Bottas ahead of him into P2 on Lap 52 of this 71-lap contest. To add insult to injury, the McLaren of Lando Norris then handily passed Hamilton for P3 on the subsequent lap. Lewis will be glad to see the back of Spielberg, Austria and will be hoping his old stomping grounds at Silverstone will be the tonic he needs to get his championship campaign back on track when the F1 circus makes its way to England in two weeks time. As it is, hamtion has had to watch his deficit to Verstappen balloon to 32 points in the Drivers’ standings in the face of the Red Bull ace’s three race onslaught.

Bottas ran a good race and held on to that P2 at the finish, holding off Norris while coming home nearly eighteen-seconds adrift of Verstappen. It did consolidate a much needed better run of form for the Finn, whose contract is up after the season, after finishing a valuable P3 last week at the Styrian version of this race. Norris was truly brilliant all day long, maximizing the pace of his McLaren against the theoretically superior cars around him and taking his impressive third third-place finish and podium of the season. If the rapidly improving young Englishman hadn’t been given a dubious penalty for supposedly forcing the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez off track earlier in the race it’s possible that Norris could even have bested Bottas on the day and defended his P2 starting spot. Regardless, the team will be thrilled not only with Norris’s continued development into an elite F1 driver and their Mercedes-powered MCL35M into possibly the third best car on the track, but also with the outstanding drive today of Daniel Ricciardo, who overcame a terrible P13 qualifying effort to battle all the way up to a P6 finish, contributing yet more vital points for McLaren.

Red Bull’s Perez not only did not benefit from Norris’s early penalty because he lost a ton of places when he ended up in the gravel while going for that pass on Lap 4, but the veteran Mexican was also assessed two different 5-second time penalties when the stewards judged that he returned the favor on Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc when they were battling on two separate occasions at that very same Turn 4. Again, the penalties seemed tricky-tacky for what simply looked like hard racing. But the stewards had already set the precedent with Norris’s penalty earlier so they could hardly make a different decision regarding Perez’s actions against Leclerc. That cost Checo P5 when those 10 seconds were debited from him at the finish, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who had swapped places with Leclerc on fresher Pirelli’s under team orders on Lap 66, being elevated into that P5 spot and Perez being demoted to P6. On the occasion of his 200th career Grand Prix, this race in Austria is probably not one that Perez will want to put in his personal time capsule.

The second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, livid after his couple of contretemps with Perez’s Red Bull in which the Monegasque came off the worse and in the gravel, did manage to nurse his Prancing Horse home in P8. That made it a fairly good result for Ferrari after their cars had lined up P11 and P12 on the grid, although the brass back at Maranello will be less than pleased to see McLaren pulling away from them for P3 in the Constructors’. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly was back in the points in P9 after a DNF here last weekend, although the team’s other driver, Yuki Tsunoda, made a hash of his race with a couple of silly pit entry penalties that saw the young  Japanese driver relegated to P12. On the other hand, Alpine’s wise old head Fernando Alonso made it a four-race points scoring streak by fighting his way up to P10 by the time the checkers flew.

Top 10 finishers of the Austrian GP:

Complete race results amiable via Formula1.com.

After the three races in three weekend sprint the next contest is in a fortnight’s time, the venerable British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Hamilton will be hoping the old airfield circuit, which he usually seems to dominate and where he has racked up six career wins, will be the tonic he needs to reinvigorate his championship aspirations after a rough run of five winless races. Verstappen, on the other hand, will be looking to prove that his Red Bull is the better car on any given circuit on the calendar this year. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!