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Max Verstappen settles for second in Austria and extends his advantage
It wasn't the usual Red Bull Ring masterclass from the reigning world champion, but a strong haul of points saw his championship lead swell as the F1 season hit the halfway stage in Styria.
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Max Verstappen chooses to see the glass as half-full, not half-empty. After looking set to extend his stellar Formula One record at the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday, the Oracle Red Bull Racing star took off from pole position and led for the opening exchanges, but soon sensed this year's run around the Red Bull Ring might have a different ending.
Battling with tyre wear, Verstappen was vulnerable to Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, who eventually took his third win of the season and his first since round three in Australia. In the process, Leclerc snapped Verstappen's run of victories at a track he'd made his own.
Second place extended Verstappen's lead atop the championship standings at the halfway mark of the season to 38 points. Even with the adrenaline of 71 laps of ferocious racing still coursing through his veins, it was a time for pragmatism rather than panic.
"It was a tricky day. It seemed like we were struggling quite a bit with the tyres [and] that continued on every single [tyre] compound," he said.
"Too much degradation to really attack Charles, especially … but second place is still a good result for us on a difficult day."
There was no doubt who was the fan favourite at the Red Bull Ring...
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Second place is nothing to feel flat about, but when you've had the run of success Verstappen has enjoyed in front of the 'Oranje Army' of Dutch fans who typically pack the Red Bull Ring in droves, anything other than a win is something of a let-down. Verstappen previously won in Austria in 2018, 2019 and twice in 2021 (when the circuit hosted both the Austrian and Styrian Grands Prix), and hopes were up for a high five when he aced the Sprint Qualifying race over 24 laps on Saturday to start from pole position on Sunday.
Second could have very easily been third, but for Carlos Sainz's Ferrari blowing an engine as he was hunting Verstappen down with just 14 laps remaining. Leclerc's winning margin at the end of the race, as he battled with throttle gremlins, was just 1.5s. Sainz's retirement meant Lewis Hamilton inherited third place for Mercedes. This was the third race running the Briton had taken the final podium position.
Here's how round 11 of the season played out in Austria.
Max fights on despite tyre struggles
Speed was never Verstappen's problem in Austria – he set the fastest lap of the race (1m 07.275s on Lap 62 of 71) as he turned up the heat on Leclerc – but tyre preservation proved a task too tough.
Verstappen held Leclerc off for the first 12 laps before relinquishing the lead, immediately pitted for hard tyres on the next lap and resumed the lead when Leclerc pitted but then lost the advantage to the Monegasque driver on Lap 33. Another pit stop for new hard tyres three laps later only repeated the sequence, Verstappen leading until Leclerc came past for a third – and final – time on Lap 53.
Verstappen nailed the start, but Leclerc didn't buckle
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Oracle Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner tipped his cap to Ferrari on a day where the red cars had raw speed in reserve.
"Ferrari, congratulations to them because they had a quicker car through the majority of the race," Horner said.
"Our tyre [degradation] was higher from halfway through the first stint, and it was hard to combat that. Ferrari just seemed lighter on the tyres.
"Our pace at the end of the race – we still got the fastest lap, but we didn't have the range we had yesterday. That's something we need to understand."
While Verstappen takes a healthy championship lead into the season's second half and Red Bull's advantage in the constructors' standings sits at 56 points after 11 races, Horner says a result like Austria's shows the enormity of the task in maintaining that ascendancy.
"The championships look healthy, but Ferrari are quick, and we've got to keep pushing," he said. "We can't afford to back off."
Cruel early contact for Checo
Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Pérez had done the hard yards before Sunday's race even started. In qualifying on Friday evening, the Mexican had all his lap times in Q3 deleted for a track limits infringement in Q2, seeing him demoted to 13th place on the grid for the Sprint Qualifying race.
A Saturday salvage job was critical if he was to score big on Sunday. He advanced to fifth on Saturday to get back in the game. Unfortunately for Pérez, it was effectively game over on Sunday's opening lap when he made contact with the Mercedes of George Russell at Turn 4 as the pair fought over fourth place, Pérez ending up backwards in the gravel trap and at the back of the field.
Russell was later assessed a five-second penalty for the incident, but that was of little consolation for Pérez, who soldiered on in last place until Lap 24 until significant damage to the right-hand side of the car saw him park in the pits and retire.
Pérez was an early spectator through no fault of his own
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"I feel we did everything we possibly could to avoid the incident, but it's only Lap 1, and it's up to George to control his car, and he couldn't control it clearly," he said. "We ended up making contact when I was clearly ahead."
Horner echoed the frustrations of his driver, who dropped to third in the world championship with 151 points after Leclerc's win propelled him to 170.
"It was a shame with Checo… there was just so much damage that there was no chance for him to score any points," Horner said.
"It was better to save the [engine] mileage. It's a tricky corner there, and we've seen so many incidents on the outside – it's just a shame he wasn't given more space."
AlphaTauri's Austrian GP unravels
Next year's F1 calendar is likely to feature six Sprint Race weekends, but you could forgive Pierre Gasly for not jumping for joy. For the second time in as many Sprint events this year, the Scuderia AlphaTauri driver's Sunday was ruined by a Saturday incident that saw him finish in 16th place.
From 11th on the grid in the sprint, Gasly found himself with nowhere to go at the first corner as Hamilton, and Alex Albon squabbled for position, Gasly's left rear tyre making contact with Hamilton's front right wheel. The Frenchman spun, re-joined at the back and made his way back to 14th at the chequered flag.
Gasly's weekend went south after Saturday's sprint race
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Sunday's race was already a struggle for Gasly before he made contact with Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin on Lap 40 at the same corner where Pérez and Russell came to blows, extending his recent dry run to just one point finish in the past eight races.
The only driver he beat was team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, who was the final runner classified in 16th place after starting the race on hard tyres from the same position on the grid.
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Sprint is here to stay, if not to thrill
Saturday's 24-lap entrée race to the Grand Prix proper wasn't an action-packed spectacle once Verstappen had repelled Leclerc into the first corner, save for Gasly's early spin and some intra-team Ferrari fighting that enabled the Dutchman to escape to a lead he never looked like relinquishing.
Pérez's clinical rise from 13th to fifth was classy, while Albon's afternoon featured the clash with Gasly, a five-second penalty for squeezing McLaren's Lando Norris off track at Turn 3, and a later incident with Vettel that saw the Aston Martin spin off into the Turn 7 gravel trap.
When the dust settled, the last three places on the grid for Sunday's race featured Vettel, Alpine's Fernando Alonso (whose car failed to start on the grid) and Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas, who started last because of an engine penalty. It's not every day the final three places on an F1 grid feature a trio of drivers with a combined 95 wins and six world championships… Alonso did the best of the trio on Sunday, finishing 10th.
The third and final F1 Sprint for 2022 will take place at Interlagos, Brazil, in November.
South of France starts the second half
Four races in five weekends make July the busiest month of the 2022 F1 calendar. The teams will appreciate a weekend off before the final double-header preceding the summer break, beginning with the French Grand Prix on July 24 at the Circuit Paul Ricard.
The circuit in the south of France, which offers 167 different track configurations, came back onto the calendar in 2018 after a 28-year break. The French GP was held at rural Magny-Cours until 2008 before disappearing from the schedule altogether for a decade.
Verstappen is the most recent winner at Paul Ricard, overtaking long-time race leader Lewis Hamilton on the second-last lap 12 months ago, while Pérez led for five of the 53 laps before eventually finishing in third place.
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