The paddock was back, back, back again for another weekend at Spielberg, unsurprisingly some familiar names will be cropping up again in these report cards. Hardly astonishing when nine of the 20 cars started the Austrian GP in the same positions as the Styrian round one week before. Here are the top of the class contenders and struggle bus riders from round 9 of the 2021 season.
Top of the class:
Max Verstappen – Qualifying: 1st | Race: 1st (+FL)
What else is there to say but Max was utterly dominant this weekend and hardly got out of cruise control during the race. Qualifying may have been too close for comfort, but after the start Max ran away with the race, particularly nailing the safety car restart after an opening lap crash for the Alpine of Esteban Ocon.
Rarely featured by the coverage, Max won the race by over 17 seconds from Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas, scoring his first-ever Grand Slam by taking pole, victory and leading every lap of the race. Scoring the fastest lap just topped off the performance.
With Verstappen winning this entire triple header, he now leads the Driver’s Championship by 32 points which is a considerable lead after only 9 races.
Max’s performance at Austria was a fitting way to celebrate a return of full(ish) capacity to an F1 race for the first time since Abu Dhabi in 2019, at the same venue that kicked off the delayed 2020 season. If that is how the Orange Army celebrates in Austria, just imagine what Zandvoort could be like in September.
Lando Norris – Qualifying: 2nd | Race: 3rd
Another driver making back-to-back appearances is McLaren’s Lando Norris, who had his strongest F1 performance to date in the Austrian Grand Prix.
Lando smashed his qualifying record by setting a time good enough for the front row, incredibly the McLaren driver was actually on course for a shock pole until the final corner. Even so, for Lando to outqualify the Mercedes in a customer car was an incredible achievement, and gave the team their first front row start since Brazil 2012.
In the race, Lando made a strong start but copped the attention of the stewards for pushing Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez into the gravel at turn 4 on lap 4, which resulted in him later getting a five-second penalty for forcing another car off the track.
Whatever your opinion is on the incident, Norris still drove a strong race to hold off Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton for a number of laps and received a rather nice compliment from the 7-time World Champion, who could be heard saying “Such a great driver, Lando” over the team radio.
Taking the penalty at the pit stops dropped Lando down to fourth behind Valtteri Bottas, but he would reclaim a podium by overtaking Hamilton, who was struggling with aero loss after sustaining damage on the kerbs at turn 1.
Norris’ third podium of 2021 means that he stays P4 in the Driver’s Championship, but that result also means that he has now outscored his 2020 season in just 9 races. These performances have been important for McLaren in their fight with Ferrari for P3 whilst teammate Daniel Ricciardo still has his struggles, the Woking squad now has a 19-point advantage in that battle.
Carlos Sainz – Qualifying: 11th (started 10th) | Race: 5th
Of all the drivers that swapped teams between 2020 and 2021, Carlos Sainz has hands down adapted the best at his new team, and this was on full display at the Austrian Grand Prix.
A mediocre qualifying left Sainz (and Leclerc) knocked out in Q2, but maybe this was a strategic decision as neither car was fast enough to make it through on the mediums, and with Pirelli bring softer tyres for this round, they didn’t want to be boxed in on a two-stop strategy.
Sainz started on the hard tyres and whilst he lost out at the start, he was able to run a very long first stint that brought him a net P8. He was able to get past teammate Leclerc and Daniel Ricciardo with a fresh tyre advantage and got close enough to Pérez to take P5 off the Mexican, who had two 5-second penalties for pushing Leclerc off the track at turns 4 and 6 respectively.
It was another impressive race for Sainz who had had the measure of Leclerc over the last few rounds, being only two points behind Charles in the standings is quite the achievement considering the Monegasque has had two seasons at the Scuderia.
George Russell – Qualifying: 9th (started 8th) | Race: 11th
So close yet so far for George in the quest for points at Williams, but it was another exceptional performance that really deserved a reward.
Albeit with a slice of luck owing to Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) blocking Fernando Alonso (Alpine) in Q2, George made it into Q3 for the first time in a Williams, marking the first time the team had made it into the season since Lance Stroll at Monza in 2018. What made this more remarkable though was that he made it on the medium tyres when the likes of both Ferraris and Ricciardo couldn’t do the same.
In Q3, he outpaced Stroll in the Aston Martin to set the ninth fastest time, and would later be elevated to 8th following Vettel’s penalty. In the race, George slipped down from 8th to 12th in the opening phase, a combination of being boxed in by AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and the fast-starting Leclerc and Ricciardo relegated him out of the points.
However, starting on the mediums afforded George the 1-stop strategy, whilst both Aston Martin and AlphaTauri cars had to make do with two. He found himself 10th until the closing stages of the race when he was caught by Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and overtaken at turn 4 with 3 just laps to go. It was a valiant effort as George defended his P10 for over 8 laps but he simply ran out of tyres at the end.
No points from the weekend but high praise from pundits, fans and even Alonso himself. This may have been Williams’ best chance to score points but you get the feeling that now Russell has broken that Q3 wall, it may come at a track we least expect.
Honourable mentions this week go to Fernando Alonso for rescuing a compromised weekend. The Alpine driver had the pace for a top 5 position in qualifying, but was blocked by Vettel at turn 10 on his final run in Q2, leaving Alonso down in 14th. He recovered to finish 10th after that intense battle with Russell and showed some good pace in the Alpine.
The struggle bus:
F1’s Penalty Points System
Having rewatched the race I come to agree with the stewards, we want to see hard but fair racing. Unfortunately, Norris did overstep the mark with Pérez, so did the Mexican on both occasions with Leclerc.
What I don’t agree with is the severity of penalty points assigned to the incidents. Lando picked up two whilst Pérez got four (two for each incident), whilst Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Räikkönen got the same number for the collision with Vettel in spite of a post-race 20-second penalty, in comparison to 5-seconds for forcing a car off the track.
This just doesn’t translate in my mind and is the leading reason why Lando and Sergio are hovering dangerously close to race bans (10 and 8 points respectively). They aren’t dangerous drivers in comparison to certain others on the grid, yet they are sitting duck should they cross the threshold of 12. At least Lando loses two before the next round at Silverstone, but both he and Sergio will sit on 8 points for a number of rounds.
In the case of Räikkönen, his penalty is fair – but to give the same number of points for a relatively minor infraction is ludicrous and just undermines this penalty system. A penalty system that I think (on the whole) has benefited F1 since its introduction in 2014. It just needs some tinkering because it’s not right, a reprimand for Norris and 1 point for Sergio – since he did it twice – would more have sufficed in this scenario.
Kimi Räikkönen – Qualifying: 15th | Race: 15th (finished 16th)
Another below-par performance from the veteran, not only being outqualified again by teammate Antonio Giovinazzi, but having that stupid crash with Vettel on the penultimate lap.
Whether he was too busy trying to pounce on George for P11 exiting turn 4, was daydreaming, or tried aggressively defending the place from Vettel – it really didn’t work because Kimi just speared into the side of the Aston Martin (and his former teammate) with both cars being spat into the gravel at turn 5.
The Finn received a 20-second time penalty but still ended up being classified higher than he finished because of more severe penalties to drivers around him.
Esteban Ocon – Qualifying: 17th | Result: DNF
I’m going to keep this one short because I have a suspicion that Ocon’s lack of pace is down to an issue with the car relating to a failure in Baku, rather than Ocon himself, because he was performing well at the start of the season.
A second consecutive Q1 knockout was followed by a race that last three corners before he was sandwiched between Giovinazzi and Haas’ Mick Schumacher. Ocon’s front right suspension broke and that brought a sorry end to yet another miserable race.
The break before Silverstone is very much needed for Alpine and Esteban to find out where it is all going wrong.
Nikita Mazepin – Qualifying: 20th | Race: 18th
With a double-header at the same track, even Nikita should have shown some signs of improvement, but he did not. Not only infuriating Räikkönen and Hamilton in free practice, but he was also over half a second off teammate Mick in Qualifying.
He found himself over 50 seconds behind Schumacher at the chequered flag, and was then hit with a post-race stop/go penalty converted into a 30 second time penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags after the Räikkönen/Vettel incident. These performances just aren’t good enough, and with 5 penalty points in 9 races, he will have to mindful for the remaining races of the season.
A whole host of names could make it into the dishonourable mentions list but I’ll keep it to the other penalised drivers from the weekend; Sergio Pérez, Yuki Tsunoda and Nicholas Latifi. Having been forced off the track himself, Sergio’s defending against Leclerc overstepped the mark and rightly received two 5-second penalties for forcing the Ferrari off the track.
Whilst Tsunoda had his best qualifying performance of the season, his two 5-second penalties for crossing the line at the pit entry just highlights the overall lack of maturity and composure that he’s displayed on multiple occasions this season. Latifi makes this list for falling foul of the same issue as Mazepin, at least he showed some good defending from Giovinazzi during the race – which just about saves him from the struggle bus.
The paddock has survived its first triple-header of the season, all of a sudden, we only have 2 races to enjoy before the summer break. There’s a week hiatus in action before the iconic Silverstone round in front of a full capacity (somehow), the race is also lights out at 3 pm BST.
