Mercedes are favorites to win Austrian GP race after strong show during pre-season Barcelona testing. The World Champion dominated the race week by locking front row in all practice sessions and Qualifying,unfortunately Hamilton’s late 3 place grid penalty moved him from P2 to P5 on the starting Grid.
Race winner, Bottas had a nice start during race, there was no pressure from behind as he pulled away from second place Max Verstappen during initial laps. The Fin led every single lap of the race from start to finish and he clinched his 8th win of his career with commanding performance.
Bottas survived three safety car interventions,continuous pressure from his super fast teammate who moved up from P5 to P2 and reliability scare.Both Mercedes car had sensor issues and their busy pit-wall reminding both drivers to stay away from punishing kerbs.
Lewis Hamilton had one of those unlucky day, He got demoted from P2 to P5 on the starting grid by stewards just before start of the race,for ignoring yellow flags during final Qualifying session on Saturday.
At start of the race, he was forced take escape route by fellow Brit, Lando Norris. Hamilton dispatched Albon and Norris quickly to take P3 before Max Verstappen’s retirement due to power loss.
First safety car helped Hamilton to close the gap to his teammate in First place,but he was not able to overtake The Fin.In the end, 5 seconds time penalty due to Late collision with Red Bull man Alex Albon pushed Hamilton from P2 to P4 in the final standings.
Though Mercedes looks mighty on track, they need to do better job from strategy point of view. The defending Champions missed chance to pit both the cars during second safety car period for fresh tires unlike their rivals Red Bull,Mclaren and Ferrari.This mistake would have cost Mercedes win. Team could have done better job in informing Hamilton about his time gap to Lando Norris during final lap, which cost Brit podium in first race of 2020 season.
After first race of the season, Mercedes leads constructor standings with 37 points. Race winner leads Drivers standings with 25 points.
Bottas about his winning start
“Winning an F1 race is never easy, but today was particularly challenging. There were so many things going on in the race and it would have been quite easy to make a small mistake and lose it all. When the Safety Car came out the last time, I was thinking ‘Come on! Again!?’ I guess it was my chance to really master the restarts here. When you’re in the lead, you want things to be constant and trouble-free, but today felt more like dodging bullets, though things were never out of control. I could build a good margin in the first stint and look after the car and the tyres to make sure that we could stick to our planned strategy. In the second stint, there was more pressure, particularly after all the Safety Cars. We faced some reliability concerns during the race, which put quite a bit of pressure on us, but luckily we made it to the end with both cars. I think we’ve shown that we have a good package. We need to get on top of the reliability issues, but I have no doubts that our team can solve those. I’m looking forward to another race here next weekend”
Hamilton reflects on his race
“The team did a really great job today and so did Valtteri. I drove my heart out in the race, I did everything I could – but it was just one of those weekends. There are lots of areas where I can improve. I didn’t do a great job in Qualifying yesterday and there’s only me to blame; then this morning was very unusual to get called up right before the race, but I just tried to keep my head down and drive hard. The scenario with Alex felt more like a racing incident to me. The time penalty meant that I lost the podium, but it is what it is. The car felt great, although reliability was a real issue for us today. But at least we finished, so we’ll take those points. Obviously it’s a loss from a potential 1-2, but I’ll try to recover those in the coming races. Ultimately, this was not a good weekend for me, but it could be worse – I’ll take what I’ve got, try to learn from it and be better next time”.
Toto Wolff on his Teams performance
“What a great race for the fans who waited so long to see F1 back on TV. Congratulations to Valtteri and the entire team for the win. It wasn’t a good day for Lewis who was very unfortunate with the two penalties. The grid penalty is something you must take on the chin, but the five-second time penalty felt too harsh from my perspective. I looked at the video a couple of times: Lewis had full steering lock in the corner, Albon had track left to make the corner, so in my opinion this wasn’t justified. But I recognise that the stewards have a very complex job of coming up with the right decisions and sometimes those decisions go for you, sometimes against. As a team, we faced some real challenges with our gearbox in the race. The situation was pretty serious; we saw issues on Valtteri’s car early on and a little later on Lewis’ car as well. It was something that could end your race instantly. We know that it was linked to the vibration of the car which is why we asked both drivers to keep off the kerbs. At a certain stage it looked like neither of our cars would finish the race, so we were trying to cruise home and really look after our cars. Both drivers showed strong pace, they were pretty evenly matched this weekend and it was really more the reliability that caused us headaches. Spielberg stresses some parts on the car more than any other track in the season, so we need to work hard to improve the situation for the next weekend, but we have some ideas on how to do that.”
