In Pictures: Styria 2021
Max Verstappen wins his home race, first of two races in 2021 at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
The weekend started with several drivers topping the times with the usual sandbagging before Saturday's Qualifying, although it was eventual race winner Max Verstappen setting fastest laps during both Friday practices. One of the race favorites, Valtteri Bottas, spun his car in the pit lane in FP2 after leaving his pit box in second gear and being caught out by the higher wheel-spin. He was later penalized with a three-place grid drop for Sunday's Race.
Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time during Saturday's morning practice, adding to the anxiety. Qualifying saw Max Verstappen delivering a blistering lap to claim Pole Position ahead of Valtteri Bottas, who was demoted from second to fifth on the grid due to his penalty, promoting Lewis Hamilton to second, Lando Norris third, and Sergio Perez to fourth.
On Sunday, Max showed his true race pace and had a rather smooth race, pushing the limits of his Red Bull RB16B to claim his third win of the season. Hamilton also had a rather calm race, not being able to take the fight to Verstappen but keeping enough distance to those behind him.
““I am super happy to win here and doing it at home at the Red Bull Ring is always so special. I had a really enjoyable race, the car was working well and I always enjoy driving on this track. I just focused on my own race, concentrating on hitting the apexes in the places I wanted to, looking after the tires and it worked out well. You never know how competitive or how close it’s going to be on a Sunday and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting it to be like it was today as the long run pace between the two teams was very closely matched all weekend. Overall, we’ve had a really positive weekend and of course it’s not going to be completely the same next week. Everyone else will also learn from this race so we will of course try and do even better and keep improving ourselves so we can stay ahead. It’s a whole Team effort so thank you very much to everyone here and back at the factory for another great win today.””
““Today was a bit of a lonely race for me - I was trying to keep up with the Red Bull but with the speed they have, they have obviously made some big improvements over the last couple of races and it was impossible to keep up. I don’t know where we are losing all the time, I think their long runs seem to be a bit better, plus on the straight it feels like we lose a lot. It’s a serious challenge, we need to figure out what we can do to elevate the package and give us more performance but it was a really good result to get second and third. We got good points as a team today and we have just got to keep pushing.””
““From where I started, I think we maximized the race - starting from fifth and finishing third was a decent result. There was not much left in my tires at the end, today was more like rallying in Finnish Lapland than F1 in Austria! The Red Bulls seems two-tenths quicker than us each lap at the moment, which is quite a lot. Today we managed to beat one of them which was good but we need to improve the car moving forward to compete for the win. We need to accept that they are ahead at the moment and use it as motivation. It was a pretty clean weekend for me - other than the penalty - and P2 in qualifying and a podium finish is positive and I’m looking forward to next week.””
