Max Verstappen won the Austrian GP Sprint race, but was overtaken for the lead by Lando Norris before managing to re-take first place in a thrilling duel.
Here’s how the race played out.
The sprint race got off to a false start, almost literally, as the original start was abandoned and the cars had to do an extra formation lap, due to photographers standing in a dangerous place at Turn 1. The extra formation lap reduced the total sprint race distance by 1 lap, as the cars wouldn’t have enough fuel for the extra lap.
Eventually the Austrian GP got underway at the second attempt. When it did, Verstappen got a great start and comfortably led in to Turn 1. Behind him, Norris got away slowly and his teammate Piastri challenged him in to the first few corners, but the McLarens held their start positions.
Once the three DRS zones were activated from lap 2, Norris quickly caught up to the back of Verstappen. By lap 4, Max was having to defend from Lando at the end of the DRS zones.
On lap 5 it all kicked off. Lando made a huge lunge late on the brakes at the end of the first DRS zone in to Turn 3, from a long way behind, and slid up the inside of Verstappen. He managed to get it stopped in time but Max got a good run out of the corner.
Lando left a small gap up the inside in to the next corner, Turn 4. Max fought back and dived back up the inside of Lando. That slowed Norris down and Piastri saw his opportunity to slip past his teammate around the outside of Turn 6.
For the next 10 laps, Piastri slowly fell back from Max and out of his DRS zone. The McLarens were apparently managing their tyres, but Norris started to catch up to the back of his teammate. By lap 15 Norris was in DRS range of Oscar and for the remainder of the race he could get close to the back of his teammate at the end of the straights.
But Piastri drove very calmly and confidently and didn’t put a foot wrong. He managed to hold off his teammate until the end of the race.
In the end Verstappen won the sprint by 4.5 seconds from Piastri, Norris, Russell, Sainz and Hamilton.
Driver's reaction
After the race, Lando said “It was a good race between us, it was good fun with Max at the beginning. There were probably some things I should have done a bit better with my battle. I had a good battle trying to get past Oscar but lost too much in the middle sector with the dirty air. A great result for the team.”
When asked if the McLarens could have worked better together to get Max, Lando said “I don’t think so, we had good pace but Max was probably a little too fast for us today.”
When asked about his divebomb on Max, he said “I had to make the most of my oppourtunity. Then I messed it up and left the door open like an amateur.”
Piastri after finishing P2 when asked if he was happy with his finishing position he said “Yes and no, I didn’t quite have the pace in the second half of that one. We’ll take the points, a really good haul for the team.”
When asked about his move to get past his teammate he said “I could see they were battling hard and in to T4 I could see the move was late. I could see there’d be an opportunity on the exit and after that I bided my time, had one chance to get Max on the next lap but couldn’t get it done.”
The race winner Verstappen said “It was a good first lap, but then once the DRS opened it’s very hard to get out of it. A few exciting battles as well, and once we’d cleared the DRS I could do my own race. The two McLarens were flat out, making it difficult for me, and I had to work for it in that race.”
Analysis
As Lando said after the race, he made a mistake by leaving the door open to Verstappen to re-take the lead. He should have defended harder, and he knows it. Had he done so he would have held the lead and maintained the clear-air advantage over Max, giving him a much better chance to control the race from the front.
Piastri put a spanner in the works for Lando. Even though Lando fell out of DR when he dropped to third, he managed to catch back up to within one second of Piastri and get DRS again. So it seemed like Lando had a little more pace than Oscar and whilst Piastri faded away from behind Max, Lando may have been able to maintain a smaller gap and maybe even challenge for the lead.
Results
1 Max VERSTAPPEN Red Bull Racing
2 Oscar PIASTRI McLaren +4.616
3 Lando NORRIS McLaren +5.348
4 George RUSSELL Mercedes +8.354
5 Carlos SAINZ Ferrari +9.989
6 Lewis HAMILTON Mercedes +11.207
7 Charles LECLERC Ferrari +13.424
8 Sergio PEREZ Red Bull Racing +17.409
9 Kevin MAGNUSSEN Haas F1 Team +24.084
10 Lance STROLL Aston Martin +29.980
11 Esteban OCON Alpine +30.724
12 Pierre GASLY Alpine +31.147
13 Yuki TSUNODA RB +35.212
14 Nico HULKENBERG Haas F1 Team +38.086
15 Daniel RICCIARDO RB +38.502
16 Fernando ALONSO Aston Martin +41.813
17 Logan SARGEANT Williams +43.196
18 Alexander ALBON Williams +43.834
19 Valtteri BOTTAS Kick Sauber +45.489
20 Guanyu ZHOU Kick Sauber +51.689
