Austrian GP - As Verstappen wins again, Ferrari run their best race so far!

Have you ever seen a driver leading a race come into the pits on the penultimate lap, warming up the tyres as if he were alone on the track and set the fastest lap, then winning effortlessly? In case the answer is negative, that's exactly what Max Verstappen did yesterday, in the final stages of the Austrian Grand Prix.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

His fifth victory on the Red Bull Ring (and 42nd in his career) shows clear signs of sporting arrogance, branding a domain that is far from over...

The 71 laps covered in the race delivered a final classification reviewed hours later by a lot of penalties due to track limits: we'll focus on this aspect in the closing part of this article.

A revised top 10, after eight drivers are hit with post-race penalties in Spielberg pic.twitter.com/aE3eGEKy3p

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 2, 2023

Verstappen's domination shows no signs of stopping

When analyzing races whose outcome often sees the same driver in front of everyone, it's very easy to run out of adjectives to describe the domination that all of us Formula 1 fans are witnessing. But winning a race, as we know, must be never taken for granted - not even when the technical advantage over the competition allows you to keep a margin compared to your full potential.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Yesterday there was a circumstance - the Virtual Safety Car - in which the World Champion had lost the leadership of the Grand Prix in favour of Charles Leclerc, but thanks to the technical superiority of his driver+car package, he caught up the Monegasque once again and overtook him, then building a gap of about 24 seconds.

That's when the aforementioned pit stop took place: in my opinion a totally unnecessary pit stop, as the risks associated with it far exceeded the benefit obtained, i.e. the additional point for the fastest lap in the race (with a laptime of 1'07"012).

"Today during the VSC we chose not to pit, we stayed true to our initial strategy and it worked well. All the stints, with all the tyres, went very well: I enjoyed it [...] Third World Title? I don't think about it for now, we continue to work well as we did during this weekend. Many things can go wrong in a weekend, especially with the Sprint Race, but everything went well. Now let's focus on Silverstone!"

Max Verstappen

As highlighted in the last Grand Prix, a distinctive trait of Verstappen's dominance is his self-confidence: and precisely this element brings the extra value that can overturn the outcome of a World Championship. Proof of this is the 2021 World Championship, the first won by Max: everyone points out at the Abu Dhabi finale of that season, but we shouldn't forget that Max challenged a 7-time World Champion at the top of his form, not disfiguring in that high-level battle in virtue of that same confidence...

Best race of 2023 for Ferrari, strong performance in every stint!

Behind Verstappen we find the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, deservingly in second place after a race in which he was undermined very little by the drivers behind him: the only potential danger, Sergio Perez who then finished third, had lost too much time in the comeback from the starting P15 to be able to reach the second step of the podium.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Having run a race mostly in clean air certainly favoured Leclerc, but the demonstration of Ferrari's improvements lies in the fact that in Baku (another occasion in which the Monegasque had reached the podium) in the final stages of the race, the performance had dropped dramatically, so much to risk losing the P3 in favour of Alonso.

On the other hand, tyre management hasn't been a problem this time, with the second quickest race pace for pretty much all the 71 race laps. Of course, that performance wasn't enough to fight with Verstappen, but the Ferrari clan already knew that this wasn't going to be possible.

“I would have preferred the first place, but that's okay... The first stint was all about tyre degradation, so we knew we'd have to keep a bit of a margin at the start to push towards the end. The pace then came back, and it allowed us to maximize the result. The updates are working well and we've done a step forward, even if it's clear that there's still a lot of work to do: it's too early to say that we are becoming the second quickest team, also because I think Aston Martin and Mercedesstruggled more than usual [...] Now we'll try to take another step in Silverstone, where we've often had good results: it's one of my favorite tracks and I'll do everything to aim for the win. We hope to have more great satisfactions in the next races, but we have to be realistic: Red Bull was once again ahead today"

Charles Leclerc

In sixth position (demoted from his P4) we find Carlos Sainz, who drove well in a race where small mistakes led to a result that doesn't reflect the level held by the driver from Madrid.

Above all, the 5-second time penalty for infringing the track limits: in that circumstance Carlos lost precoius race time, crucial in the fight with Sergio Perez for the lowest step of the podium.

“I'm not very happy, I had the pace to do more than a fourth place. I was driving well, but we'll have to analyze what could have been done differently... I'm left with a feeling of great bitterness [...] After the first pit stop the pace was good, I made some good overtaking and good defenses but that wasn't what I wanted. I don't know and we'll never know if I could have kept up with Verstappen's pace in the first stint, I can only say that behind Charles I felt good and was also managing the tyres well. I did a team job, as agreed before the race, but it's frustrating to have done this kind of work and then lose three positions and six or seven seconds at the first pit stop"

Carlos Sainz

We saw a hard but at the same time intelligent defense from Sainz: every time the two arrived at the detection point in turn 3, Carlos made sure he had the front of his car behind Perez's RB19. In this way he could take advantage of the DRS in the following straight to defend himself (or overtaking) the Mexican, who saw the superiority of his vehicle nullified for some laps.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The episode to which #55 refers, on the other hand, is the "double" pit stop made by Ferrari during the Virtual Safety Car, a correct choice in my opinion but which he didn't like. Clearly he felt he had more pace in hand and probably had the potential to even finish in second place, but last year too we saw some position freezing by the Ferrari pitwall: after all, his first (and only) victory in Formula 1 actually came in this way!

What does the race pace analysis tell us?

A linear Grand Prix like the one held yesterday is the right opportunity to measure the race pace of the top teams, thus trying to extrapolate useful trends in view of the next races.

Race pace held by the top teams in the Austrian GP

In the tangled graph above (in which we also added the McLaren of Lando Norris, the real outsider of yesterday with his fourth place) the advantage in terms of laptime enjoyed by Verstappen at the moment is clear. But if this was already abundantly clear, it's more interesting to note how much time Perez lost in the first stint due to the comeback that was necessary after starting in P15. From lap 26 onwards, having cleared all the traffic, Checo started running with competitive laptimes, only bettered by his teammate.

Behind the Ferrari pace, it's also important to note the difference in behaviour of Norris' McLaren MCL60 (equipped with upgrades that his teammate Piastri didn't have) and Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin AMR23. If the first car was able to lap on average faster laptimes, the second one had way more consistency: in the end, 4 seconds separated Alonso from Norris on the finish line, a gap that matured entirely in the laps (up to 56th) in which the English driver managed to stay in the DRS area behind Sainz.

We'll talk about the pace of the two Mercedes later, adding an important consideration on the design choices of the Brackley team: in any case, I expect their performance at Silverstone to be on a similar level to what we've seen in the Spanish GP in Barcelona.

What is McLaren's progress due to?

At the beginning of the season, the Team Principal Andrea Stella invited McLaren fans to be patient, predicting a defensive start to the 2023 World Championship. The real updates on the MCL60 would arrive only after a few months, and so it was!

Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

The updates that overturned the English team's car make it very similar in aerodynamic concept to the Aston Martin AMR23, and more broadly allow Norris (waiting to evaluate Oscar Piastri when he'll have the upgrade package too) to have more downforce and greater aerodynamic efficiency. This addresses the biggest weakness of this design, which we have often encountered in the form of a low top speed.

In the next few days we'll delve into the updates brought in Spielberg by McLaren, analyzing every area that has been modified in a feature article.

"Honestly, I was a bit nervous when I started the race, I was afraid the pace would bring us back today, but actually it was better than I expected: it was a nice surprise, but it's still not the best. Alonso for example was faster than me in the closing laps, while I risked spinning at every corner. The things we have complained about all year are still the same, but here we were at a higher level in terms of race pace. It was a very positive day, and it was good to battle with the Ferraris and the Red Bulls. But above all, we beat the Aston Martins and the Mercedes, which was our main focus today"

Lando Norris

Disappointing race for Aston Martin and Mercedes: what limited their potential?

The Alonso-Hamilton duel that had spiced up the Canadian GP has come up again, albeit less close than last time, for lower positions on the Red Bull Ring. Framing the race of the two World Champions in the broader context of their teams' performances, Aston Martin collects 12 points on the Austrian Sunday, while Mercedes has to settle for only 10 points.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Personally, even if Alonso's P5 is certainly mustn't be thrown away, I believe that not having achieved a podium was due - in addition to the performance expressed by the two Ferraris - to the high downforce setup chosen for the weekend by the Silverstone-based team. At the end of Saturday we highlighted how this choice could have given the Asturian driver an advantage in terms of tyre management, and in fact even the strategy of starting with the Hard tyres seemed to aim precisely at exploiting this strength. Instead, due to the VSC which forced Fernando to switch to Medium tyres, his Sunday took an unwanted turn...

"We're experiencing 23 races with a football mindset: every Sunday whoever wins and scores three points seems to be going well, while everyone else appears to be struggling. But maybe the following weekend everything turns upside down... We need to have a bit of a broader perspective, looking longer term without forgetting that we suffered a bit this weekend"

Fernando Alonso

At Mercedes, Hamilton (P8) and Russell (P7) cannot be satisfied with the points collected, less than Red Bull, Ferrari, Aston Martin and even McLaren. A 'fifth force' weekend that clashes with the ambitions of both Team Principal Toto Wolff and the drivers themselves...

“Today I was slow: the car wasn't working for some reason, and the day wasn't the best. We didn't expect to be so slow: we still don't have an answer as to why, but this track has highlighted various areas for improvement that we need to focus on. We knew we didn't have a strong rear end this weekend so we took off a lot of front wing load to keep the balance. In some corners, especially in turn 10, I was having a really hard time sliding and I couldn't help it, which is why I struggled to stay within the track limits. We added a bit of front wing load at both stops and the car started to come back, but it was still tough"

Lewis Hamilton

“Today was really challenging and our pace wasn't what we expected. After yesterday, I was hoping to get something more out of this Grand Prix [...] We have the same car in Barcelona, where we were very fast, so we need to figure out what went wrong on our part. At the moment the car moves a lot and this weekend it went worse than at other circuits. On the other hand, this bodes well for Silverstone, which is a circuit more similar to Barcelona"

George Russell

The explanation I find for the English-German team's bad weekend has to do with a design aspect that is not often talked about, but which sometimes makes the difference: the sizing of the Power Unit cooling system.

Deciding the airflow mass that will feed the engine and all the parts in contact with it is an exercise that often requires a compromise between cooling and aerodynamic drag: since there are some circuits located at higher altitudes, in these areas (Spielberg, Mexico City and São Paulo, being precise) the lower air density means an increase in the cooling demand compared to circuits located on sea level. Designing an oversized cooling system that aims to optimize performance only on these circuits means having an excess of drag on the remaining 20 tracks! It's clear which is the best choice, and Mercedes is well aware of having to sacrifice the result in these races in order to have a higher average performance elsewhere...

In recent years, to be honest, the technology then available to Mercedes made the Austrian event even more frightening: even if there have been improvements over the last year or two, the problem is still there!

A lot of penalties for track limits: is it right to review a GP result hours after the checquered flag?

If there's a problem that has plagued the Red Bull Ring since its reintroduction in the F1 calendar is that of track limits. With its nature, similar to that of a kart track, the Austrian track invites drivers to cross the white lines to gain time out of the corners: this happens above all in the last two corners, Turn 9 and Turn 10.

This year more than on other occasions, the Race Director immediately clarified that there would be zero tolerance when exceeding the track limits, and so it was. But the situation got so out of hand that after the race - thanks also to a protest lodged by Aston Martin - the marshals found themselves with over 1200 laps to be re-analyzed!

The time penalties imposed at the end of the Austrian GP

This is the reason why, hours after the checquered flag, the result of the GP was overturned with a lot of additional penalties, summarized in the table above.

Regardless of the strict application of the rules, which I found correct to avoid any kind of dispute, I think it's appropriate to review the layout of the track to avoid situations like yesterday's: in 2024 we'll be able to see if the organizers will have sort this problem out; meanwhile, Formula 1 moves to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix!