STYRIAN GRAND PRIX 2021: RACE REVIEW

Clinical Verstappen romps to Styrian Grand Prix victory.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took his 4th victory of the season to give his team their 4th consecutive victory on the trot to build on the championship lead. The Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas rounded up the podium places with Sergio Pérez finishing agonizingly close behind Bottas after a slow pit stop saw the Mexican fall behind Bottas.

First lap drama saw Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc tangle with the AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly, going into Turn 1 that saw Gasly suffer a puncture which would eventually lead to his retirement. In trying to evade out of the way, Gasly also tagged Antonio Giovinazzi, who spun and luckily didn’t have too much damage and continued with his race. Leclerc’s lap one incident saw the Ferrari driver pit for the hard compound tyre, and he had his task cut out as he rejoined the field, right at the back. Verstappen led from Hamilton, Norris, Perez, and Bottas, but the McLaren of Norris was eaten up by the superior straight-line pace of the Red Bull and Mercedes behind, leaving him P5. Behind Norris, there was a massive trail of cars starting from the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll in P6 straight down to the Alfa Romeo of Kimi Räikkönen in P12, who had made up an astonishing six places in the opening few laps!

Red Bull brought in Pérez on lap 26, which saw a slightly delayed stop for the Mexican, allowing Bottas to gain track position and, more importantly, pit the next lap and come out ahead of the Mexican. The Williams of George Russell who started a career best P10 for Williams post Yuki Tsunoda’s three place grid penalty for impeding Bottas in Q3, was having a stellar race in the points until his first pit stop, where he was told that his car needed to be nursed for a reliability issue. Back in the front, it was Hamilton who pitted before the race leader Verstappen, but because of the comfortable lead the Dutchman had built, he pitted the next lap and came out two seconds ahead of Hamilton.

Lap 38 saw the second retirement of the race, as a mechanical issue saw George Russell’s stellar weekend end with a DNF. There were no issues right up the field though as the race leader slowly but steadily started to increase his gap to Hamilton and started to lap all the cars in the points up till P5. Red Bull called in Pérez for a second stop on lap 55, presumably to take the point for the fastest lap. Given the healthy gap Pérez had built on Norris behind him in P5, the Mexican rejoined comfortably ahead of the McLaren. A little down the road, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz had made up a position on Lance Stroll to take P6, with his teammate charging through the field and making it back into the points after his first lap mishap. Pérez immediately took the fastest lap of the race and began to hunt down Bottas for the final podium places. The Mexican on fresher tyres began to eat up almost a second out of Finn’s lap time. Verstappen had already built up a gap of more than 15 seconds to Hamilton as the race entered into the final few laps and with Bottas almost 28 seconds behind his teammate, the Brit pit on the penultimate lap in pursuit of the extra fastest lap point. Hamilton did take the extra point on the last lap, as the final few corners saw Bottas just managing to fend off Pérez to secure a double podium of Mercedes. McLaren’s Lando Norris finished in fifth ahead of the Ferrari pair of Sainz and Leclerc, followed by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, Alpine’s Fernando Alonso, and AlphaTauri’s only remaining car of Yuki Tsunoda, wrapping up the top 10.

Verstappen’s emphatic victory meant this was the first time in the turbo-hybrid era that Mercedes hadn’t won in four consecutive races, a sign of the progress Red Bull have made this season. With his fourth victory of the season, Max increased his gap in the drivers’ championship to 18 points over Hamilton. His team currently leads the constructors’ championship with a 40 point gap between themselves and the defending champions. As we head to the third and final race of the season’s first tripleheader in Austria next week, Red Bull will surely go in as favorites, with Mercedes having to play catch up, something they haven’t done in a long time.