F1 Preview: Tough Times for F1 as Austria Awaits

Its the first back to back Formula One race weekend of the year with France last week and Austria this weekend. To say F1 needs a good race or a feel-good result is an understatement.

Mercedes have won the last 10 Grand Prix and this year’s ‘fight’ for the championship looks all but over with Ferrari unable to challenge consistently and Valtteri Bottas unable to match teammate Lewis Hamilton’s pace each weekend.

The situation is not good for the sport. Nobody likes dominance, we all want to go into each weekend not knowing which team will put one of their cars on pole position and win the race, we all want the championship to go down to the wire and we won’t to see good, hard racing throughout the field (not just the midpack).

Here’s some worrying facts:

The last time a Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull did not finish a Grand Prix in:

• 5th place – was the 2018 Belgian GP, where Sergio Perez finished 5th. There have been 16 races since then
• 4th place – was the 2018 Austrian GP with Romain Grosjean. Since then we have had 20 races
• 3rd place – was the 2018 Azerbaijan GP with Perez’s Podium. Since then we have had 25 races
• 2nd place – was all the way back to 2014 at the Abu Dhabi GP, where Felipe Massa finished 2nd in the Williams. That was over four seasons ago.
• 1st place – was in the 2013 Australian GP where Kimi Raikkonen won in his Lotus. That was more than six years ago, before the turbo-hybrid era.

The worst thing is, it looks like none of these will change very soon.

This is this year’s world championship standings with one of the old points systems that was used in F1 between 1991 and 2002 – 1st: 10pts  2nd: 6pts  3rd: 4pts  4th: 3pts  5th: 2pts  6th: 1pt.

Drivers’ Championship

• Lewis Hamilton    – 72
• Valtteri Bottas      – 51
• Sebastian Vettel  – 30
• Max Verstappen  – 25
• Charles Leclerc   – 20
• Pierre Gasly         – 4
• Carlos Sainz        – 2
• Kevin Magnussen – 1
• Daniel Ricciardo   – 1
• Lando Norris         – 1
• Sergio Perez         – 1

Constructors’ Championship

• Mercedes     – 123
• Ferrari          – 50
• Red Bull       – 29
• McLaren       – 3
• Renault         – 1
• Haas             – 1
• Racing Point – 1

Apart from Monaco, the same five drivers have finished in the Top 5 of each race this season: Hamilton, Bottas, Vettel, Verstappen and Leclerc. The only reason that a driver who is not in a Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull has scored points (with the old system) is because Gasly has been underwhelming this year and has essentially been a midfielder.

Anyway, there is a race this weekend.

The 2.6 miles Red Bull Ring is the shortest track (in terms of laptime) of the year and has produced some stellar racing since it returned to the F1 calendar in 2014. Championship leader, Lewis Hamilton, has only won once in Austria (2016) and even that was a hard-fought victory as he collided with Nico Rosberg on the last lap of the race.

Bottas has had very good form in Austria, taking the last two pole positions in Spielberg plus a win in 2017. It is a fantastic opportunity for Bottas to strike back against Hamilton as the Red Bull Ring is one of his best circuit’s and arguably Hamilton’s worst – if Hamilton does have a weak track.

Ferrari should be much stronger here too and the next two races offer a great chance for the Italian manufacturer to take their first win of the season. Straight line speed and engine power is very important but with the three main straights being DRS zones, this mitigates any power unit advantage slightly.

The teams won’t run Monza-spec rear wings here for example and many will actually run their higher downforce rear wings. Traction and braking performance is critical, more so than other tracks.

Austria only has nine ‘real’ corners.

The first sector features just one corner and is all about carrying as much speed as possible out of turn one to get a good run up the hill. Straight line speed will be key here because of the steep uphill.

Sector two is about traction but also contains two long, high speed turns which is similar to China’s middle sector. This is where the Mercedes will be at home.Then, there is sector three which is simply two fast right handers. The drivers will love this section as they just touch the brakes before throwing the car into the corner and hoping it sticks

The second half of the lap requires a very strong front end and it will punish the front tyres heavily so a front limited car will suffer as a stint progresses.

I love this track. It’s a little bit old school and is a tougher challenge for the drivers due to the nature of it and personally I always enjoy tracks with elevation changes too.

Last year’s race was a cracker, with a surprising Mercedes double DNF when they were on for a 1-2 result. Verstappen was able to hold off the Ferrari challenge as Vettel tussled with Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen in the fight for the win.

We have not had any reliability woes this year at the head of the field which is part of the reason why the races feel so dull. Even in the midfield, Renault have got on top of their reliability and Honda with Red Bull and Toro Rosso has been solid so far.

The reliability is as good as it has ever been in F1 and definitely the best it has been in the turbo-hybrid era so we don’t get a dramatic unreliability issue which causes a DNF from nowhere. Had Mercedes not been unlucky with the virtual safety car and the double DNF, they probably would have won last year’s race relatively comfortably so that’s why they remain favourites this weekend.

Ferrari’s straight line advantage last time out in Paul Ricard miraculously went missing. The team have said that they are going to put more downforce on the car but the half a second advantage they had in Canada suddenly disappeared in France. If Ferrari don’t have their Canada straight line speed advantage, they will not be in the game this weekend despite the track suiting their car.

A possible theory is that Mercedes turned down their engines after Lance Stroll’s power unit failed in practice and then turned them back up for France or it may have been a setup choice. We’ll see if Ferrari dominate the speed traps in Austria.

Something that could provide some head scratching for the teams is the soaring temperatures that will happen in Spielberg this weekend. Over 30 degrees celcius is predicted for Sunday with lots of UV from the sun. The track temperatures will likely be over 50 and last year there was a lot of tyre degradation.

With this thinner tyre tread, there might not be as much degradation but these Pirelli tyres have such a small operating window that it is more about thermal degradation than pure tyre wear. It would be nice to see a mix of one and two stop strategies across the field and the temperatures may provide that.

Rain is not expected again and a strange thing to note is that the Sunday before the Monaco, Canadian and this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix has seen rain. Yet a week later when F1 turns up, there’s nothing. Also it’s forecast to rain on the Monday and Tuesday after Sunday’s race.

Its been 35 races since the last wet race, Singapore 2017 (I don’t count Germany last year as only a few drivers put on wet/intermediate tyres and at no point those were the right tyres to be on). It’s very strange and for some reason, F1 is an irritant to wet weather. A wet race would spice things up a lot though, wouldn’t it.

The heat should play into the hands of Red Bull and Ferrari but that alone will not be enough to beat the Mighty Mercs. Leclerc, Vettel or Verstappen will need a perfect weekend to beat Hamilton and Bottas and right now, F1 badly needs a non-Mercedes win for the sake of the sport and for the good of the fans.