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Tyres NorthamptonCharles Leclerc took Ferrari's second successive Formula One win as the championship moment slowly swings back in the Italian constructor's favour. Following the late Safety Car in Silverstone, where he lost the lead in the final laps, the Monegasque driver survived a throttle pedal scare to cross the line in first place. Ferrari looked on course for a 1-2 finish, but another mechanical failure ruined Carlos Sainz's race, forcing him to retire and dampening any celebrations for the Scuderia.
Championship leader Max Verstappen managed to finish in second place without the presence of Sainz, but his Red Bull team will wonder where their pace went on Sunday. The Dutch driver took pole position on Friday, won Saturday's Sprint event, but couldn't seem to follow up in the Grand Prix. Verstappen's speed, or lack of, on Pirelli's hard compound tyre showed a crack in his armour and suggests that this championship still has some twists left.
Following the first-lap incident with Guanyu Zhou in Silverstone, George Russell had another collision on Lap 1 in Austria. After Sainz kept the charging Briton at bay between Turn 1 and 3, Sergio Perez tried to pass Russell on the outside of Turn 4. Instead, the two collided, sending Perez into the gravel and needing to repair his car from the damage. The crash put the Mexican driver at the back of the pack, and he swapped to hard tyres to try and salvage his Sunday.
The stewards issued Russell a 5-second penalty for his role in the collision. He also headed to the pit lane for a new front wing, falling down the order as Mercedes waited for those long five seconds to finish before working on the car. Russell also got hard tyres, hoping to preserve his Pirellis to go as long into the race as possible to make up places.
It was another disastrous start for the Mercedes newcomer. However, it wasn't all bad news for the Brackley-based team. The sister Silver Arrow of Lewis Hamilton made his way forwards past both Haas cars to try and close in on the frontrunners. Hamilton was making up for a Qualifying crash that led to his team needing to rebuild his car on Friday night.
Out front, Verstappen was leading but rapidly losing ground to Leclerc, who had closed into DRS range. Finally, after probing for a few laps, Leclerc made a late move down the inside of Turn 4 with Verstappen leaving the door open ever so slightly, and the Ferrari driver took the lead. Immediately sensing he wouldn't close back in to retake P1, Red Bull instructed their lead driver to pit to try and undercut on fresh tyres. Ferrari, however, didn't take the bait and left both Leclerc and Sainz out in first and second to go further into the race on their yellow-walled medium Pirellis.
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Thirteen laps later, Leclerc finally pitted, emerging 7-seconds adrift of Verstappen, but with much fresher rubber to attack his Red Bull rival again. By this point, Verstappen had also become the sole Red Bull in the race after Perez retired in the pit lane due to damage from the earlier Russell collision. With the odds stacking against Verstappen, it didn't take long for Leclerc to overtake again, this time on the uphill approach to Turn 3. Sainz, who pitted one lap after Leclerc, also began to close up to the world champion, who simply didn't have an answer to Ferrari's Sunday speed.
Rather than lose more time battling against the inevitable, Verstappen became the first lead driver to try a two-stop strategy and pitted as soon as Sainz got into DRS range. However, another set of Pirelli hard tyres that Verstappen already was struggling with was the only dice roll Red Bull had, and the world champion fell back to P3, just ahead of Hamilton.
After dispatching two Haas drivers in two laps earlier, Hamilton had also overtaken a high-running Esteban Ocon to move up to fourth and almost matched Verstappen's lap times. Red Bull even surprised Verstappen by asking their driver to beat the times of the Mercedes, which tellingly showed who Christian Horner's team thought they were racing at their home race.
Verstappen's second stop began a trend of two-stop strategies at a race many thought would be a simple one-stopper. Instead, most teams preferred two runs on Pirelli's hard compound, with tyre degradation proving more problematic than expected. Leclerc and Sainz repeated their earlier strategy of pitting a dozen or so laps after the reigning world champion, and Leclerc again had to pass on track to regain the lead.
This time, Leclerc only had a 3.6s gap to close down to reach Verstappen. He overtook the Red Bull driver for the third time in the afternoon, again at Turn 3. Sainz also quickly reeled in the Dutch driver but, for the third time, didn't pass him on track. This time, Verstappen didn't dive into the pits to avoid a scrap with Sainz – he didn't have to.
A mechanical failure prematurely ended Sainz's race for the second time in four races. His Ferrari dramatically burst into flames, and a scary few moments followed as the Austrian marshalls took a little too long to extinguish the fire. Eventually, a visibly shaken Sainz sat at the side of the track, thankfully unharmed, but the Spaniard was out of the race.
A Virtual Safety Car period followed, and the front three drivers, Leclerc, Verstappen, and Hamilton, took on a final set of Pirellis. This time the medium compound was the preferred option, and the race to the line began. Leclerc still had the advantage over Verstappen but complained over the radio that his throttle wasn't fully disengaging. On-board graphics showed that the Ferrari was always at around 20% throttle, even when Lecler had his foot off, and the Monegasque driver needed to nurse it around the final miles of the Austrian Grand Prix.
Fortunately for Leclerc, he overcame the problem and finished 1.5s ahead of Verstappen, who will feel fortunate to take P2 after Sainz's fiery end. Hamilton also reached the podium after the Spaniard's retirement, his third P3 in three races, with Russell reaching P4 in a spirited fightback. Mercedes look to be inching closer to Red Bull and Ferrari, and it could be a three-way fight in a fortnight at the French Grand Prix.
