Austrian Grand Prix: 'Max Verstappen's domination leaves rivals helpless'
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Max Verstappen was unstoppable in Austria
It was Charles Leclerc who, after the Austrian Grand Prix, summed up just how helpless Max Verstappen's rivals are feeling in the face of his domination this season.
Just before half distance, Leclerc's Ferrari was leading the race, with Verstappen closing in rapidly. These are drivers who have plenty of history with each other. It goes right back to their teenage years in karting, and has included some of the most intense on-track battles of the last few years in Formula 1.
Ferrari's last victory was in this event last year.
But Leclerc did not even try to defend from Verstappen as the world champion went for the inside at Turn Three.
"I knew it was a matter of time," Leclerc said. "Max had much fresher tyres. They are also quicker whenever we have the same tyres so it's not like I tried to push like crazy.
"I knew it was crucial to lose as little time as possible in this battle. And this is why I haven't been as aggressive as I have been other times when we have been fighting for real positions.
"This one was a bit different. If he hadn't overtaken me (there), it was the lap after and I would have lost more time and it would not have benefited me in the race."
What Leclerc was effectively saying was: "I'm not in Max's race. He's in another one, all on his own. He is too fast to hold back. So there's no point in trying."
Leclerc keeps his chin up
Verstappen's consummate, imperious, crushing victory around Red Bull's own track on Sunday was his seventh win in nine races this year. His team-mate Sergio Perez has won the other two.
A few races ago, Perez was showing pretensions of challenging Verstappen for the drivers' title this year. Those hopes have evaporated - as everyone in F1 knew they would eventually - in a fraught few races since he won in Azerbaijan in April.
Austria was just another to add to the list. Too many track limits offences in qualifying left him 15th on the grid. He did well to recover to third, managing to pass Carlos Sainz's Ferrari after a thrilling four-lap battle, but Leclerc was too far ahead.
Verstappen now leads Perez by 81 points, and all vestiges of doubt about who will end the year as champion are over, whatever Red Bull team principal Christian Horner might say about how "it can turn around pretty quickly".
Leclerc, though, insists he still retains hope of at least some success this year, buoyed by Ferrari's upturn in performance after upgrades in the last few races.
His second place was just what he needed after a difficult run, and he said: "I am always motivated, especially after weekends like this when you finally see a bit more potential of fighting in the front. It feels good.
"It is going to be difficult to go and win this championship but there is still plenty to work on.
"I see how high the motivation is in the team and how hard they are pushing to bring upgrades earlier. This gives me the confidence and motivation to push whenever I am on track.
"I am already looking forward to Silverstone. It's a very different track and the team has done an incredible job. We are all flat out to get back winning as soon as possible. Even though we are 150 points behind, a win would feel nice and we are all working towards that target."
A boost for McLaren; pain for Mercedes
Ferrari were not the only team to leave Austria with at least some optimism despite Red Bull's steamrollering of their opposition. It was a good weekend, too, for McLaren, for whom Lando Norris excelled in their upgraded car.
Norris has had little opportunity to display his abundant talent this year, after McLaren admitted even before their car had turned a wheel that they had missed key development opportunities over the winter and would be starting the season in an uncompetitive position.
Austria saw the debut of the first of a series of upgrades aimed at moving them into a more competitive position, and Norris qualified and finished fourth.
Optimism is being tempered by realism at McLaren, by the acceptance that both Norris and the team have historically been strong at the Red Bull Ring.
"The car is quicker everywhere," Norris said. "It is just difficult to drive still. If we had a nicer car to drive with a bigger working range, I think we could make a bigger step forward.
"More things are coming next weekend. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves. This has always been our best race of the year and I will make sure I let everyone in the team know that, just to keep our heads down and stay cool for next weekend."
Team principal Andrea Stella said he believed the team were beginning to see the results of the restructure he instigated upon taking up the role over the winter and which has seen technical director James Key lose his job.
"There has been quite a lot of reorganisation at McLaren even though this process is still ongoing," Stella said. "In the aerodynamic department, there has been a change of gear.
"The effectiveness - the conceptual lead thanks to having appointed Peter Prodromou (as technical director aerodynamics, transferring from a sidelined role) - and in general the capacity to generate ideas and develop them seems quite reinvigorated, and we see this in the development rate.
"It seems to have taken a good gradient upwards. I would say it is due to the evolution of the team that we kicked off a few months ago."
Norris took the honour of top Briton in Austria from its usual holder - one of the Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton or George Russell - after a dire weekend for the former champion team.
Mercedes introduced their own upgrade three races ago, and have more coming for Silverstone this coming weekend, but so far the report card on it is mixed.
"It was a bruising day," said team principal Toto Wolff. "We couldn't make the car quick. It was never in a good place."
Seven-time champion Hamilton fell foul of the track limits
Track limits border on farce
Not in a good place? The same could be said of F1 itself over the course of an Austrian Grand Prix weekend that was marked by a seemingly endless series of penalties for track limits.
Perez and Hamilton were the two highest-profile drivers to be affected before the race, Hamilton starting Saturday's shorter sprint race from 18th after he had his lap time deleted in the first qualifying session.
But in the race the situation bordered on farcical. Almost half the field were penalised during the grand prix itself - including Hamilton and Sainz - and after the race the FIA revealed that there had been more than 1,200 incidents of exceeding track limits reported, some of which had not been penalised.
It took five hours after the race for this to be fully sifted through and it changed around the order of the top 10, demoting Sainz from fourth to sixth behind Norris and Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso, putting Hamilton down a place to eighth behind Russell, and demoting Pierre Gasly's Alpine from ninth to 10th behind Alonso's team-mate Lance Stroll.
Why did this happen? It's down to a combination of stricter policing of track limits dating from the start of 2022, more resources to police it this year, and a track where the final two corners are notorious for such offences because of their design.
Race director Niels Wittich recommended after last year's Austrian Grand Prix that gravel be added behind the kerbs as a deterrent for drivers running too wide. But this was not acted upon because motorbike racing's MotoGP, which also uses the Red Bull Ring, does not like such designs for safety reasons.
Horner, whose employer owns the track, said: "It made us as a sport look a little amateurish. When you have so many infringements, a strip of gravel or something when you run out there (would be better). Drivers can't see the white line.
"It needs to be looked at for next year to act as a deterrent for drivers to be drawn on that surface. The argument is MotoGP, but you have to have something flexible for F1."
Safety fears in the spotlight
The other issue occupying the drivers over the weekend was the death of 18-year-old Dutchman Dilano van 't Hoff in a crash in a junior category race at Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday.
F1 itself races at Spa - one of the world's fastest, most dangerous and most challenging circuits - at the end of the month, and this crash brought back uncomfortable memories of the accident that killed Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert at the Belgian Grand Prix in 2019.
The drivers agreed among themselves not to make knee-jerk comments about the crash, but that did not stop Aston Martin's Lance Stroll saying on Saturday: "That corner needs to be changed. We've been saying it for years and we have lost two kids now in four years. We are going to be there in a few weeks and we seriously need to think about that."
The other drivers did not necessarily share his views, not least because the two accidents happened in different places - Hubert's on the exit of the Raidillon corner, Van 't Hoff's further up the following straight - even if they shared some characteristics.
Verstappen said it "feels a bit unfair to blame it on the track" because other factors were involved. But the top three finishers all agreed specific lessons needed to be learned, particularly about dangerous corners and poor visibility in the wet.
Verstappen agreed that Raidillon - the exit of the famous Eau Rouge swerves - was a dangerous, blind corner, but said there were others just as bad, and he singled out the fast swerves at the start of the lap in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
He and Leclerc agreed that barriers should be moved back in high-speed sections of track to avoid cars crashing and bouncing back on to the circuit where they can be hit by other cars.
Perez said more could be done at Raidillon, despite significant safety changes there in recent years, including expanding the run-off area.
And all said the fact visibility is effectively zero in wet races needs to be taken more seriously.
"You are just hoping the guy in front is flat out," Leclerc said, "and that there are no cars in the middle of the road. It's obviously horrible what happened again."
"There are," Verstappen concluded, "a lot of things that have to come together that we have to improve."