Max Verstappen increases his title lead to 32 points with third win in a row on a day Lewis Hamilton picks up car damages and finishes fourth; Lando Norris a superb third for McLaren despite time penalty for early Sergio Perez clash; 11 drivers investigated after the race, three penalised
Monday 5 July 2021 06:14, UK
Max Verstappen took full advantage of a difficult Austrian GP for title rival Lewis Hamilton to widen his points lead beyond the equivalent of a race win with a second crushing victory at the Red Bull Ring.
Triumphing on Red Bull's home track on successive weekends to complete a clean sweep of F1's triple-header, Verstappen was in a class of his own and victory, combined with a fourth-placed finish for Hamilton who picked up car damage, means the Dutchman now leads the standings by 32 points.
Valtteri Bottas was second for Mercedes, just finishing ahead of McLaren's Lando Norris who capped a superb weekend with his third podium finish of the season.
And Norris would surely have finished ahead of Bottas but for a five-second time penalty served at his first pit stop for a lap-four clash with Sergio Perez which saw the Red Bull run into the gravel - a sanction driver and his McLaren team disputed.
Hamilton, who started fourth, had moved up to second in the first stint ahead of Norris but started to struggle with his Mercedes in the second after his car picked up rear damage over the Turn 10 kerbs.
The world champion was overtaken by team-mate Bottas, eased through on instruction by the team, and Norris in quick succession before heading for a second pit stop on lap 53. But the damage and lost performance was such that Hamilton, even on fresh tyres, was unable to make an impact from there and so stayed fourth.
"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," said Hamilton. "So a lot of points lost today."
Bottas finished 15s behind Verstappen but the gap would have been greater had the runaway Red Bull not made a late second pit stop for fresh tyres to make sure of the bonus point for fastest lap.
"Even better than last week," said a delighted Verstappen, who secured a first career Grand Slam of pole, fastest lap and lights-to-flag win. "The car was on rails on every tyre. Incredible, guys.
"That was just amazing, let's keep this up."
Perez experienced a rather more tumultuous afternoon in the second Red Bull and was eventually classified in sixth.
The Mexican had dropped down to 10th place when he was forced wide by Norris as he attempted to overtake the McLaren for second around the outside of Turn Four.
But while stewards found in Perez's favour there, handing Norris his time penalty, the Red Bull driver was later hit with two five-second sanctions of his own for running Ferrari's Charles Leclerc off track in separate incidents at Turns Four and Six.
Perez finished fifth on the road but the combined 10s demotion dropped him behind the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, who matched his result from last Sunday after another strong and strategic drive from the middle of the pack.
And while his weekend paled into comparison to the one of team-mate Norris, Daniel Ricciardo also drove strongly, recovering from qualifying 13th to secure seventh ahead of Leclerc and boost McLaren's points haul in their constructors' fight with Ferrari.
Pierre Gasly was ninth with AlphaTauri's strategy not working out as hoped from row three, on a day team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, somewhat inexplicably, picked up two time penalties for cutting the line on his entries to the pit lane.
But there was late and fresh frustration for George Russell.
Having suffered a technical failure when running eighth here last Sunday, the young Briton was relegated out of what would have been his first point for Williams at the 46th attempt with three laps to go when Alpine's Fernando Alonso overtook him for 10th place.
Russell therefore finished the wrong side of the line in 11th, with even Alonso - who has tipped the 23-year-old Englishman to be a future world champion - admitting he felt sorry to pass him.
Austrian GP Result: Top 10
1) Max Verstappen, Red Bull
2) Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes
3) Lando Norris, McLaren
4) Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
5) Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
6) Sergio Perez, Red Bull
7) Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
8) Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
9) Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri
10) Fernando Alonso, Alpine
Meanwhile, the final tour produced a strange collision between friends and former team-mates Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, who were running out of the points. The two cars made contact through Turn Five, sending them spiralling into the gravel.
The former champions were called to the stewards afterwards and Raikkonen was judged to have been at fault, with the Finnish veteran penalised by a 20s penalty in lieu of a drive-through. He remained 16th.
Six other drivers - including points finishers Sainz, Perez, Ricciardo, Leclerc and Gasly - were summoned in an investigation linked to their speeds when passing double-waved yellow flags for the incident.
However, after several hours of analysis, only Haas' Nikita Mazepin and Williams' Nicholas Latifi were found to have contravened the regulations, with the pair having 30s added to their respective race times towards the foot of the order.
An 11th driver, Russell, was also called in to explain his defensive driving in front of Raikkonen once he had been overtaken by Alonso, but he was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Although Verstappen is F1's form man and was Sunday's runaway winner, there could be few arguments about Norris' status as the fans' driver of the day.
Slotting in behind the polesitting Dutchman from the first front-row start of his career at the top level, Norris kept the other Red Bull at bay three laps later - albeit unfairly in the eyes of the stewards' - when Perez attacked on the restart lap after the Safety Car had been called for Esteban Ocon's stopped Alpine.
While the stewards deliberated over the incident, Norris raced on in second place and successfully kept Hamilton at bay for 16 laps despite the Mercedes having the advantage of DRS.
Such was Verstappen's command on proceedings around the Red Bull Ring for the second weekend in succession that the championship leader was four seconds ahead by lap 10 and nearly 10 seconds ahead by the time Hamilton overtook Norris on lap 20.
But this was no slight on Norris as underlined by Hamilton who, seemingly impressed by his young countryman's driving, still took time after his Turn Three overtake to say over team radio: "Such a great driver, Lando."
Norris then dropped behind Bottas at the stops while he served his penalty and into a fourth place he was seemingly likely to stay at best for the remainder of the race.
Yet the podium came back into clear view when the loss of downforce Hamilton's Mercedes had sustained around the time of its pit stop started to heavily compromise the world champion's pace. Bottas was the first to close in and, although the Mercedes pit wall initially instructed the Finn to remain behind, the decision was soon reversed with Norris closing them both down and they swapped positions on lap 52 into Turn Four.
Norris followed through, at Turn Six, a lap later and then ran close behind Bottas for the remainder of the race, crossing the finish line within three seconds of the Mercedes driver's second place.
"It was fun, it was a good race, it was exciting... but I'm disappointed because we should have been second place," admitted Norris, who now has four third-place finishes in three seasons of F1.
"I thought on Lap One [after the Safety Car] was just racing really, he [Perez] tried to go around the outside which is a bit stupid, and he ran off the track himself, I didn't even push him.
"I'm frustrated but also happy with P3, we had very good pace. It's nice to know we can actually race them. That was probably the first race in many years where we were actually racing a Mercedes and a Red Bull. Hopefully we can keep it up."
It's the Home of British Motorsport next on the agenda for F1 2021 - with a race weekend schedule like no other before in the history of the sport.
The British GP on July 16-18, which is set to feature a capacity crowd, will see the debut of Sprint Qualifying, a short, flat-out 100km sprint race on the Saturday to set the grid for the Sunday Grand Prix, as part of a revised weekend schedule which sees competitive action on all three days.
Watch all the coverage live on Sky Sports F1.
