George Russell held off Max Verstappen to win the Austrian Grand Prix by just over a second and a half. The Englishman delivered a strong drive to secure his first victory since the opening race in Melbourne and could be a huge boost mid-season as he seeks to close the gap to his teammate Kimi Antonelli in the championship.<\/p>\n
Russell delivered a strong, composed race as he fended off the reinvigorated Verstappen as the four-time champion piled on the pressure during the second half of the race. But the Red Bull appeared to lack enough pace to challenge for his first win of the season as Antonelli was unable to get close enough on the final lap.<\/p>\n
Russell was starting from the front of the grid after snatching pole on Saturday with a “magic” qualifying lap that came after another weekend where he appeared to be in danger of being outperformed by Antonelli.<\/p>\n
Mercedes’ early dominance appears to be over following an intense fight for victory at the start of the season, it\u2019s also important if Russell is to fight his less experienced teammate, who has won five of the last six races. This whole weekend was somewhat of a statement after he snatched pole away after Charles Leclerc crashed in Q3 yesterday.\u2019<\/p>\n
Over the final stint of twenty-eight laps, Verstappen had the gap to Russell down to just 1.3 seconds when the Briton stopped for a second time on lap 43, and Red Bull left their man out for a further six laps to try to build a tyre offset. Antonelli, meanwhile, stopped two laps after Verstappen, and the tense climax was staged.<\/p>\n
Verstappen had a ten-second deficit to close in twenty laps, and Antonelli five on Verstappen. For a time, it looked as if Verstappen would be the one to catch Russell, but Antonelli was always a threat as well.<\/p>\n
The gaps progressively closed through the remaining laps, and the three crossed the line in one camera shot, as Russell led Verstappen by a second and a half, with Antonelli just three tenths further behind. Verstappen had flashed the potential of his heavily upgraded Red Bull in qualifying before a high-speed crash limited him to fifth on the grid, but few believed he could be a genuine contender for victory from that position on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Russell said: “Incredible to be back on the top step. It’s been a little while, so I will definitely enjoy this one this evening. A lot of hard work with my team to get us back on track. Obviously, it was a tricky run of form at one point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMax and Red Bull were incredibly quick this weekend, so kudos to them. I had to push every single lap and I knew how quick the guys were behind. Kimi has been extraordinarily quick this season, so every lap I was looking at the timing board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell’s victory reduces his championship deficit to Antonelli to forty points and moves the Brit back up to second in the standings ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who finished in fifth behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri by four and a half seconds. Isack Hadjar brought his Red Bull home sixth as he finished just over three seconds behind Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Hamilton taken out of contention for victory by the way the strategy played out but that was caused by the decision to stop just before the VSC, caused by Carlos Sainz stopping on the pit straight just after his second stop. The timing opening the door for Oscar Piastri to take fourth and finish four and a half ahead of the seven-time champion.<\/p>\n
Following Ferrari\u2019s win in Barcelona and Red Bull\u2019s strong performance, it appears the ebb and flow of the challengers to Mercedes is set to continue, and McLaren are not far behind either. Lando Norris finished seventh, fourteen seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc, who appeared to struggle to get his tyres to work as he dropped back from second on the grid.<\/p>\n
The Racing Bulls rounded out the top ten, but both were a lap down with Liam Lawson finishing the race just over three and a half seconds ahead of his teammate Arvid Lindblad. They finished ahead of both Audi\u2019s, with Gabriel Bortoleto finishing eight seconds clear of teammate Nico Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly led Ollie Bearman home, finishing twenty-three seconds behind, finishing ahead of their respective teammates, Franco Colapinto and Esteban Ocon, who were a further lap down. While Alex Albon and Fernando Alonso were the final classified runners, the Williams a lap ahead of the Aston Martin.<\/p>\n
Alonso teammate, Lance Stroll, retired from the running due to a suspected ERS issue, while Carlos Sainz\u2019s race came to an abrupt halt when his Williams stopped on the main straight with a suspected electrical problem. It was a bad day for Cadillac, as both Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas retired in the opening laps because of overheating brakes.<\/p>\n
George Russell held off Max Verstappen to win the Austrian Grand Prix by just over a second and a half. The Englishman delivered a strong drive to secure his first victory since the opening race in Melbourne and could be a huge boost mid-season as he seeks to close the gap to his teammate Kimi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,209,211,212,814,2252,1283,1298,1604,1612,1637,2344,1642,1643,1876,1924],"class_list":["post-16110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2339","tag-austria","tag-austrian-gp","tag-austrian-grand-prix","tag-george-russell","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-race","tag-race-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-red-bull-ring","tag-spielberg","tag-styria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16118,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110\/revisions\/16118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}