F1 Talk: Chaos Errupts at the Austrian GP

Austria always seems to deliver an exciting Grand Prix and Sunday saw arguably the best race of the F1 season so far. The championship lead changed for a 5th time whilst Red Bull unexpectedly won at the Red Bull Ring and neither of the bulletproof Mercedes cars finished.

3, 2, 1 those are the results of Max Verstappen’s last three races. Three podiums in the last three races which have all seen the Dutchman perform at his best. A little bit of luck for Verstappen on Sunday saw him take his fourth F1 victory. Funnily enough, the last time there was a double Mercedes DNF was in Spain 2016 and the podium then was Verstappen, Raikkonen, Vettel – exactly the same as Sunday’s podium and in the same order.

The last few races have shown why Verstappen is going to be a future champion because his natural speed is unbeatable. Mexico last year was the event where we saw the real max Verstappen. He was on rails all weekend and in front of 20,000 Dutch fans he delivered yet again. On what is a very tricky circuit, which still has some old school sections, the young Dutchman made no mistakes and is driving extremely well and is doing it at the right time with three events in the next four weeks.

But how did Mercedes end up losing a race which looked perfectly set for them? I didn’t have high hopes for the race after qualifying. On such a short 4.3KM circuit which takes just over one minute to complete, Mercedes locked out the front row with ease. Their race pace was strong on Friday and on Saturday evening, it was announced that Sebastian Vettel would take a 3 grid place penalty for impeding Carlos Sainz in Q2 of qualifying.

Both drivers got through to Q3 anyway so it didn’t really matter. Yes, Sainz had to do an extra run and could easily have taken some damage to the car but we’ve seen lots of incidents in qualifying in the last few years which haven’t been punished if both drivers got through. Personally, I would have gave Vettel a reprimand. Renault didn’t even complain themselves but it is what is it as they say and had Vettel started where he qualified then given what happened, he would have surely won the race.

It was all looking bright for the mighty Mercs. Even after a dramatic start, they ended up 1-2 after the first lap with Hamilton ahead of Bottas. Kimi Raikkonen was super aggressive which was great to see. He tried to go through the middle of the Mercedes and he was just millimetres from a similar accident to the start crash at least year’s Singapore Grand Prix. It was on all the way through the first lap.

What turned out to be the move for the win was Verstappen’s overtake on Raikkonen for what was 3rd place at the time at turn 7. Raikkonen has a slide midway through turn 6 which cost him speed and momentum so Verstappen went for it at the next turn. Minor contact was made but it was a fair manoeuvre as Verstappen has an overlap going into turn 7.

Nico Hulkenberg had a massive engine failure and just minutes later, Valtteri Bottas suffered a loss of hydraulic pressure. I feel really sorry for Bottas. He’s been the unluckiest driver in F1 this year and should be much closer to Hamilton and Vettel in the championship. The frustration of not having a win will be painful. Bottas couldn’t find a place to stop that was completely out of danger, unlike Hulkenberg, so a VSC was brought out.

At the head of the race, everyone pitted… apart from Lewis Hamilton. It’s so easy to criticise the Mercedes strategy call because Red Bull at least were going to pit anyway (according to them). Mercedes would have pitted on the next lap but the VSC ended before they could do so. It was a bit of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation because if Mercedes did pit, surely one of the Red Bull or Ferrari cars would have done the opposite to them and stayed out.

But, under the VSC at Austria you lost around 10 seconds, compared to 21 seconds during a normal green flag situation. If neither of the Ferraris or Red Bulls pitted then Hamilton still would have came out in 3rd place knowing that the others ahead of him would have to pit. He could then babysit his tyres to try and keep the temperatures down to stop those surprisingly large blisters that flared up.

We heard Mercedes strategist, James Vowles, apologise to Hamilton over the team radio. This week Christian Horner has said that Mercedes were “unfair” to throw Vowles under the bus. Mercedes technical director, James Allison had his say:

“In this particular instance it was James (Vowles) showing an extremely broad pair of shoulders, standing up and saying ‘that was my mistake Lewis’ and I am sorry for it,”

Hamilton didn’t help the situation and made things worse with his radio calls. Rather than trying to make the best of the situation, he’s always blaming the team for ruining his races and it seems to get to him and his driving suffers. But, you can understand the frustration from him. After the bad luck in Australia with the VSC and in China with the SC it’s not the first time Mercedes haven’t been able to react quick enough to the situation that’s happening to them in real time.

It isn’t easy to make these type of big strategy calls even if it looks like a simple and obvious decision on the outside. The pressure is immense and you can overthink things. Mercedes probably thought they had enough time to look at what their rivals did and react on the following lap if they had to. You can’t really tell how long a VSC will stay out for. With such a short lap, the VSC was expected to stay out for more than one lap but it wasn’t to be. Whilst one Mercedes retired, it caused the other Mercedes to drop out of position through strategy.

All of this didn’t matter in the end as Hamilton retired from the race which ended his 33 race record points streak. But maybe it did matter. A small metal clip fell inside the fuel pump which caused a blockage. Had Hamilton been out in front and cruising along rather than pushing very hard to recover from a bad choice from the team, who knows what would have happened. Either way it was Mercedes darkest day for a very long time and the first time ever all Mercedes cars DNF due to reliability issues.

We saw Ricciardo pushing hard to overtake Raikkonen which he did but it then became apparent that blistering would be an issue in the race. The Australian started to lose a lot of pace and was forced to make a second pitstop. Hamilton would follow. Extreme track temperatures (46 degree celcius) on a circuit which has some high speed corners then it was an inevitability unless you didn’t push too hard initially.

These Pirelli tyres are very sensitive and it’s your initial 10 laps or so on your tyres and how you manage them that dictates if you get any graining or blistering. It’s a car thing too. Ferrari and Haas seem to be very light on their tyres compared to their rivals. For me, this isn’t a problem. You just have to make a second pitstop which is what we want to see more of. Currently, one stop races are far too common.

My biggest problem with Pirelli is that after spending the entire off-season talking about a bigger gap between tires and multi-stop races, they have delivered a season that has had the least amount of pit stops for podium finishers since they entered the sport.

They promised multi-stop races and in actuality produced more 1 stop races than ever. The top teams do not even bother running the softest tires available anymore. There’s so little difference between compounds that they can easily qualify on a harder tire. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, they can’t even do what they intended to do!

Another bit of controversy from the weekend was when Ricciardo and Verstappen disrupted their own qualifying runs by playing games with each other to try and be behind each other to get a slipstream effect. They alternate from weekend to weekend as to who goes out of the pitlane in front. In France, it was Verstappen and in Canada it was Ricciardo. It meant that it was Ricciardo’s turn in Austria. They did three runs so Ricciardo wanted at least one run, where he was behind Verstappen.

To me that’s fair enough and the problem with alternating each weekend is that on some circuits you don’t need any slipstreaming help but for some you do. At Monaco or Singapore, you don’t need any help but at places like Silverstone or Monza you do need a bit of a tow to maximise your laptime.

Haas and Force India were excellent in the race. They took advantage of three of the top cars retiring and it was Romain Grosjean who finished a season best 4th to go from zero points to 12 points. Kevin Magnussen didn’t pit under the VSC yet finished just two seconds behind his teammate. A really good showing from Haas and I expect them to do well this weekend at Silverstone.

Force India took 6th and 7th as they look to close in on in Haas and Renault. Their in-season development is usually pretty good. They aren’t as good as they have been in previous years but if they can hang on in there and pick up the pieces then they will be in the fight for best of the rest.

The race saw lots of fantastic battles including a battle for 14th place between Charles Leclerc and Lance Stroll; Leclerc recovered from a terrible start where he was in the gravel at turn 6 to collect more points in the Sauber.

Fernando Alonso started in the pitlane to finish in 8th and amazingly nobody kept their starting position after the first lap which is very rare. Meanwhile Max Verstappen continues to win races without setting the fastest lap or taking pole position! Some very strange facts and stats.

I’ll leave you with one more – never have 3 teams won 3 races each after 9 races of a season. It’s been a strange season and it has been unpredictable. Don’t rule out Verstappen for the championship yet because he will only get better.