Max Verstappen narrowly missed out on a fifth Red Bull Ring victory, with the Dutch driver losing out to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by just 1.5s at the end of a strategically tense Austrian Grand Prix.
Sergio Pérez, meanwhile, had a disappointing afternoon on the Team’s home turf as he exited the race after just 25 laps due to damage sustained in a lap-one collision with Mercedes’ George Russell.
Starting from pole, Max raced into an early lead ahead of Leclerc, but suffering with more tyre degradation, the Dutchman was passed by the Ferrari driver on three occasions as the strategies played out and in the closing stages was being hunted down by Carlos Sainz in the second Ferrari.
But when the Spaniard’s engine failed, and the VSC was deployed, Max pitted for fresh medium tyres. Leclerc then began reporting throttle problems, and chasing the win, Max closed in. However, despite his issues, Leclerc was able to cling on to the lead and after 71 laps he took victory just ahead of Max who claimed his eighth podium finish of the season.
Max Verstappen (P2):
“We were just a bit too slow today, we were doing the best we could with the strategy but the Ferraris were extremely fast. Of course, we need to understand why we had so much degradation with the tyres, I’m not sure exactly what happened, no matter which compound we used none of them seemed to work well.
Although we didn’t win today, we still walked away with a lot of points. In difficult moments you need to score points and we did that today. It was incredible to receive the support I did from the fans this weekend, but I’ve been hearing a few shocking things. It’s clearly wrong and what’s been happening is not right at all – I shouldn’t need to say this on a weekend that should be a celebration of Formula One at our home race.”
Sergio Perez (DNF):
“It was a big shame that we had our race ended so early. I had the whole race ahead of me and I thought I had good opportunities coming my way, so it was very painful. We had a lot of damage to the car and we were going nowhere so we had to retire.
I gave all the room I could to George on lap one, there was enough room for both cars not to crash and unfortunately, we ended up colliding, I don’t know what else I could have done. Today has hurt us in both Championships and hopefully, we can recover the ground. It has been the same way all season, sometimes we are quicker and sometimes Ferrari are. It is still very close but today they were clearly the quicker car. We need to look forward now, the season is long and hopefully we can come back stronger in the coming weekends.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal
“We scored some really important points today but it just wasn’t meant to be for us. Congratulations to Ferrari, although they were unlucky with Carlos, they had the faster car for the majority of the race which gave them more strategic options but Max’s tyre deg was higher from halfway through the first stint and it was hard to combat that.
Over the two races this weekend, we’ve only given away five points to Ferrari but obviously we’re really disappointed for Checo today. There was so much damage to his car from George that there was no chance for him to score any points and we had to retire him and save the mileage.
We’ll do everything we can to bounce back in France, we’re still ahead but we know how quickly things can change and we need to keep pushing. We are shocked to hear that there have been some incidents of abusive behaviour in the grandstands and the fan parks. We stand united with every member of the F1 community in condemning this. We value inclusion and want a safe space for fans to enjoy our sport.”
