Max Verstappen has won the Austrian Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and his team-mate Sergio Perez. The win maintains Red Bull’s 100% winning streak this season as Verstappen took his fifth victory around the Red Bull Ring.
With Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on pole position and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc joining him on the front row, the race start was expected to be lively.
Alpha Tauri’s Nyck De Vries and Haas’ Kevin Magnussen both started from the pitlane, making the most of a disappointing qualifying session.
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton got ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris who was close to contact with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
Then Leclerc tried going around the outside of Verstappen in a move that didn’t come off but doesn’t work.
However, the Safety Car was brought out due to debris on the circuit. Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsuonda went straight on into the gravel at turn four as his damaged car struggled to slow down and had to take avoiding action.
The battle between Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Mercedes’ George Russell for P11 came as a result of both having a disappointing qualifying session on Friday.
After 11 laps of racing, Perez got past Russell as both aimed to climb further up the leaderboard.
On lap 13, Nico Hulkenberg who justify the pits had to stop his Haas with a smoky car, which brought out the virtual safety car. Hulkenberg did also get a warning for track limits, despite being out of the race.
As Hamilton complained on team radio that he was struggling to turn his car, he was handed a five-second time penalty for track limits. Tsunoda was also given a time penalty for track limits.
Norris showed the pace of his McLaren that was benefiting from new upgrades and passed Hamilton with ease.
Carlos Sainz was the next driver to add his name to the penalty list, again for track limits.
Then the attention would switch to the very front as Verstappen chased down Leclerc as the team began questioning their own strategy.
Despite some strong defending from the Ferrari driver, the two-time World Champion easily passed the Ferrari driver going into turn three. It was a clever move from Verstappen, who dived down in the inside but ensured he was behind at the DRS line to give him the added boost for the next part of the sector.
Williams’ Alex Albon was next to be added to the penalty list for track limits. The penalties kept coming but this time it was for forcing a driver off the circuit, with De Vries being handed a five-second penalty for an incident with Haas’ Kevin Magnussen. On lap 43, Gasly was handed a five-second time penalty for track limits to make the list even longer.
Tsunoda was then handed a ten-second time penalty for track limits, with him being placed under investigation for potentially failing to serve the first penalty correctly.
With the added bonus of taking the fastest lap, Verstappen crossed the line to take yet another victory this season. He would be joined on the podium by Leclerc and Perez as Sainz and Norris rounded out the top five.
Alonso, Hamilton, Russell, Gasly and Stroll rounded out the points-paying positions.
However, post-race there was an appeal of the race result by Aston Martin, which was upheld. This meant that track limits would be investigated due to many being missed and in total, there were 83 deleted laps from the Grand Prix.
A five-second penalty for track limits was handed out to Tsunoda, on top of the other penalties he received. Ten-second penalities were handed out to Sainz, Hamilton, Gasly, Albon and Sargeant. A 15-second penalty was given to Nyck de Vries and a 30-second penalty was handed to Ocon.
This meant that the top ten finished as Verstappen, Sainz, Perez, Norris, Alonso, Sainz, Russell, Hamilton, Stroll and Gasly.