A sovereign Red Bull, a solid Ferrari performance or a Mercedes podium. This was the Grand Prix of Styria

The eighth race of the Formula 1 World Championship is now behind us and it was more of a strategic battle and reliable performances by the drivers. We can praise Ferrari or Lando Norris. There’s a big battle for the midfield. How did the Grand Prix of Styria turn out?

The first corners after the start of the race were clearly and expertly taken by Max Verstappen, who started the Styrian Grand Prix from pole position. However, it wouldn’t have been the right start at the Red Bull Ring had it not been for a collision or contact at that incriminating third corner.

Three drivers were caught in the crossfire – Pierre Gasly, Charles Leclerc and Nicholas Latifi. In particular, the first two had already fought before the entry to turn 3, Leclerc having damaged the front wing of his Ferrari as a result of the fight.

After the fight with Leclerc, Gasly also tapped Latifi in the Williams, causing a puncture. The Alpha Tauri-qualified French driver even damaged his left rear wheel’s total suspension and, due to the extensive damage, retired from the race after the first lap.

Ferrari driver Leclerc, on the other hand, had to visit his mechanics for a front wing replacement, dropping him down to eighteenth place.

Sergio Pérez and Lando Norris had a nice battle after the start. It was the latter who lost his third position for a while, but Pérez was able to recover it and get back to third.

Norris’s teammate Daniel Ricciardo also had a great start to Sunday’s race, jumping up from thirteenth place to ninth. George Russell in the Williams also made a good start, just ahead of the Australian McLaren driver after the start.

Over the next few laps Ricciardo began to put pressure on Russell and it took little to move the thirty-one year old Australian up one more place. However, lap eight saw a significant problem with the recuperation system on his monopost.

As a result, Ricciardo lost four positions before the problem was fixed. And then two laps later, Ricciardo’s stablemate Norris had the same problem. The young and very talented Briton not only lost his third position but dropped to fifth.

The energy recovery on a Formula One car is a combined vessel with the power of the car’s power unit. At the moment when the Formula One car decides to harvest energy, it is unable to deliver full power to the engine, so even though Norris was running at full throttle at the time, there was simply no power in the guts of his McLaren.

Fortunately for both McLaren drivers, the problem was solved. The 21-year-old British driver delivered a consistent, solid and very reliable performance throughout the rest of the race.

Russell also had performance and power unit problems with his Williams, which was forced to retire from the Styrian Grand Prix on lap 38 due to technical problems.

On lap 28, the Mercedes and Valtteri Bottas managed to undercut the Mexican Pérez, with the Finnish driver taking a podium finish in third place as a result. Despite all the predictions, the Ferrari stable put in a decent performance.

Leclerc was even voted the best driver of the day, managing to finish seventh in the final standings from eighteenth position. The tactics set by Carlos Sainz also worked well for the Italian team.

They only called him into the pit lane on lap 42, so Sainz drove three quarters of the race on medium-soft tyres! The 26-year-old Ferrari driver crossed the line sixth in the standings.

The victory goes clearly to Verstappen, who set a new record at the Red Bull Ring. Thanks to Lewis Hamilton’s stop two laps from the end of the race (Hamilton stopped at his mechanics for the old softest tyres due to his ambition to set the fastest lap of the race – ed.), Verstappen won by 35 and 743 thousandths of a second.

This is the longest time gap in the history of the circuit between the race winner and second place.

Hamilton’s stop paid off, however. On top of the 18 points for second place, he takes an extra championship point for the fastest lap of the race. The seven-time world champion was joined on the podium by his teammate Bottas.

Pérez crossed the line fourth ahead of fifth-placed Norris and both Ferrari drivers. Eighth place went to Lance Stroll, ninth went to Fernando Alonso and the final point for tenth place went to Yukio Tsunoda in the Alpha Tauri.

Kimi Räikkönen in his Alfa Romeo also recorded a decent result in the Styrian Grand Prix, followed by Sebastian Vettel in twelfth place. Ricciardo finished thirteenth ahead of Esteban Ocon.

Fifteenth on the results list is Antonio Giovinazzi, sixteenth place belongs to Mick Schumacher in the Haas car, seventeenth went to Latifi. Nikita Mazepin rounded out the starting field.

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