Max Verstappen claimed a second win in seven days with victory at the Styrian Grand Prix, enjoying a dominant lights-to-flag performance at the Red Bull Ring over the title rival Lewis Hamilton.
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes had no answer to the might of Max Verstappen and Red Bull in Austria on Sunday. With fourth win of the season, Max increases his lead over Hamilton to 18 in the drivers championship battle.
Verstappen’s 3rd win at the Red Bull Ring ties him with Alain Prost for the most victories at this circuit (which has had various names and layouts over the years). He has never won 3 times at any other circuit.
The Dutch man can break the tie with Prost in seven days, as bottom end of the triple header will give him another shot at their home turf in Red Bull Ring.
Sergio Perez drove another superb race to clinch P4, The Mexican missed the podium by 0.527s – Red Bull have never had both cars on the podium at the Red Bull Ring. Perez had never previously finished in the top 5 at this track.
But Red Bull and Checo can break that unwanted record on their home track in seven more days. Perez extends his championship lead over Lando Norris to 10 in driver championship battle for P3.
Red Bull (252 points) lead the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team (212 points) by 40 points in the Constructors’ Championship.
Max Verstappen (P1):
“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 tyres 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.”
Sergio Perez (P4) :
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out today and it’s a shame to miss out on the double podium. We just needed one more lap and we could have done it, that’s all it would have taken.
I think the soft tyre was slightly worse than expected this race and that hurt us towards the end of the first stint, we also had a slow stop that impacted the race as we gave the position to Bottas.
The Team tried something different with the two-stop strategy but we got caught out by traffic, but that’s how it is sometimes and we had to try something. I’m really happy for the Team today though because Max won, he did a great job and I know we have a strong package. I look forward to next weekend where we will try again to step up on the podium together.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal
“It’s been a great day and to win at our home track, secure four back-to-back wins and a 10th victory with Honda is a real achievement. It was a clinical drive from Max who managed the race out front so well. I believe it has been our strongest race of the season so far and for the first time this year Max managed to open out a bit of a gap to Lewis and put some fresh air between them.
“It was a real shame for Checo as he deserved a podium today but losing a small amount of time in the pit stop unfortunately put him out just behind Bottas. We pulled the trigger on a two-stop and Checo did a great job to hunt Valtteri down in the closing stages but needed just one more lap to finish the job.
“The motivation is sky high in Milton Keynes and the Team is performing at an incredible level, particularly given the difficulties everyone has faced during the pandemic. We are now seeing the culmination of that hard work on the chassis and power unit side and the great harmony we have within the Team and our driver pairing.”
