Red Bull’s Max Verstappen wins 2021 Austrian Grand Prix ahead of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Verstappen enjoyed a serene drive to victory at the Red Bull Ring, leading every lap of the Austrian Grand Prix from pole position – much to the delight of the thousands of orange clad fans who flocked to cheer him to a third victory in a row.
The Race winner praises his car after winning back-to-back races at Red Bull Ring, He said, “Today was incredible to be honest, the car was on rails! It was really enjoyable to drive. You go into the weekend as the favourite, but it’s never easy to do. It was insane to see all the fans and so much orange!”
Behind Max, his championship rival Lewis Hamilton worked his way up to second place from P4 on the grid before aerodynamic damage, picked up by running over exit kerbs, slowed his progress, allowing both Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas and McLaren’s Lando Norris to get past.
Despite heavy pressure from Driver Of The Day winner, Lando Norris, Bottas held on for his first P2 finish in the 2021 season, with the McLaren driver taking a third podium finish of the season in P3.
The Young Brit was not happy with 5 seconds penalty given to him by stewards for pushing Perez wide at turn 3 in the first lap. He said, “It was a good race – it was exciting but I’m disappointed because we should’ve been P2, I thought Lap 1 was just racing!”
Hamilton held on for fourth, but his deficit to Verstappen increased from 18 to 32 points in the Drivers championship standings.
Red Bull might have had an even better day, had Sergio Perez not had such an eventful race from third on the grid. After an early safety car, called on Lap 1 when Esteban Ocon was forced to park his Alpine with damage sustained bumping Antonio Giovinazzi’s Alfa Romeo at Turn 3, Perez attacked Norris for P3 at Turn 3.
Going around the outside, Perez was forced off track, with Norris given a five-second penalty as a result. However, Perez would later ease Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari off the road at exactly the same place and pick up an identical penalty, before doing the same thing to Leclerc at Turn 6 and getting one further time penalty.
That meant that while Perez crossed the line in P5, he was classified in P6, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz – who propelled himself up the order with a brilliant late charge after running a long opening stint – taking fifth.
McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, Leclerc, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Alpine’s Fernando Alonso completed the top 10, the latter taking the final points-paying position from George Russell on the penultimate lap, denying the Briton a first point with Williams.
Further back there was drama on the last lap as Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen collided with Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel as they disputed P12. Both ex-teammates lost couple places due to the incident and they were classified in P16 & P17 respectively.
AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda comes home in P12 ahead of Lance Stroll in P13 and Antonio Giovinazzi in P14. The Japanese youngster was handed +5 seconds time penalty twice by race stewards for crossing white line during pit-entry.
Coming up next…
After an intense triple header, the teams and drivers now have some well earned downtime before the the 2021 British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 16-18 weekend.
