Luke’s Weekend Review – Austrian GP 2023

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Red Bull Dominance and Drama: Round 10 Recap of the 2023 F1 Season - Sprint Shootout, Sprint Race, and Main Race Highlights

Austria 4

Round 10 of the 2023 F1 Season is over and what a weekend it’s been. We take a look into the Sprint Shootout and Sprint Race and the Main race on Sunday. We have seen Red Bull dominance at their home track, rain, penalties and FIA drama.

We start by having a closer look at the Sprint Shootout where Carlos Sainz had issues with his brakes on his SF-23 Ferrari in SQ1 and was in the garage for nearly the whole duration of SQ1, the Ferrari mechanics did however manage to get the issue sorted and Sainz was manage to squeeze a lap in to get out of SQ1 into SQ2 and from there Sainz looked really good for the rest of the shootout managing a respectable 5th ahead of his teammate Charles Leclerc, later on the FIA handed Leclerc a 3-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri during the shootout dropping him to 9th place. From there Sainz managed to finish in 3rd for the Sprint Race while Leclerc only managed to finish in 12th due to the tricky conditions in the Sprint Race.

Mercedes didn’t have the best of luck in the Sprint Shootout as we see Lewis Hamilton unable to put a time quick enough to take him out of SQ1. Even though George Russell managed to get out of SQ1, he was unable to put a time in SQ2 due to some hydraulic issues with his brakes which meant that Russell was to start in 15th, 3 spots ahead of his teammate Hamilton. In the Sprint Race however Russell managed to progress well as he was the first one to go to the slick tyres which really paid off as he managed to finish in 8th place taking the last point for the Sprint Race, he also nearly took 7th spot from Esteban Ocon as they had a drag race to the line out of turn 10 and they finished 0.009s apart. Lewis Hamilton also made a lot of places in the Sprint Race but only managed to get up to 10th.

Down at Haas we see Nico Hulkenberg qualify in 4th place which was a big surprise for the team and the Hulk fans (let’s face it, we all are). During the Sprint Race Hulkenberg quickly managed to get into 2nd place after some drama on turn 3 and managed to stay there for over half race distance when Sergio Perez manages to get back to 2nd place after losing it on lap 1. In the end Hulkenberg managed to finish in the points in 6th place after he also took a gamble to go on the slicks once the track started drying up.

Red Bull managed to get a front row lockout which was very good for the team as this weekend it was their home GP. At the start of the Sprint Race Sergio Perez managed to get off the line quicker than his teammate Max Verstappen and the pair were fighting up until turn 3 on the 1st lap. The pair nearly came together both at turn 2 where Perez squeezed Max onto the grass and then nearly came together again at Turn 3 as they go in side by side, but Perez had to go wide off the track. This is when Hulkenberg saw the opportunity and overtook Perez.

Lando Norris on the other hand wasn’t as lucky in the Sprint Race, even though he managed to qualify in 3rd place behind the Red Bulls, after Max and Perez nearly came together at turn 3, they blocked Norris and couldn’t go anywhere. Because of this Norris was a sitting duck and dropped down to 10th place and only managed to finish in 9th place as he couldn’t recover from lap 1. In the end the Sprint Race finished with Verstappen in 1st place by 21 seconds ahead of Perez followed by Sainz, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso, Hulkenberg, Ocon and Russell form the top 8 in the Sprint Race.

Drama-Filled Main Race: Round 10 of 2023 F1 Season - Max Verstappen's Dominance, Perez's Redemption, and FIA Penalties

We head now into Sunday for the main race and the weather on Sunday was all dry with no threat of rain. Max had a better start on the race as he gets off the line well, but Leclerc was on his tail for the first lap however the Safety Car came out due to some debris at turn 1 from Yuki Tsunoda’s car due to a collision with one of the Alfa Romeos. After the restart Max managed to get away well again and quickly dropped the Ferraris and started to sail ahead of everyone.

Perez on Race Day managed to redeem himself after Qualifying on Friday where Perez was unable to set a time in Q2 due to exceeding track limits and start the race in 14th. Perez by lap 12 was already back in the points as he overtakes Hulkenberg and after taking a longer stint than the rest of the field, he managed to finish the race on the podium in 3rd place.

Shortly after Perez got past Hulkenberg, we see Hulkenberg go into the pots to take some fresh rubber, but it was on lap 14 where Hulkenberg reported lack of power and had to stop his Haas at the top of turn 3. This incident brought out the Virtual Safety Car which most drivers took this opportunity to take a cheap pit stop and switch to the more durable hards for the rest of the race. Ferrari take the opportunity to double stack both drivers which for some reason didn’t go so well for Sainz as he had a slow stop dropping him from 3rd to 6th as Perez, Hamilton and Norris overtake him due to this. It didn’t take Sainz long to get back behind his teammate Leclerc who was still running in 2nd place. Sainz later on in the race lost 3rd place to Perez after an amazing battle between laps 58 and 61 as they kept switching places on the DRS.

Max didn’t take the opportunity to pit under the VSC and extended his sting on the medium tyres till lap 25 where he goes in for the hards and gives the lead to Leclerc, Max comes out on lap 25 in 3rd behind Sainz but didn’t take Max long to overtake Sainz as one lap later he was up to 2nd place and started to chase down Leclerc in first. By lap 35 Max overtook Leclerc and got back in 1st place and from there he went on to win the race. On lap 69 Max pits for softs to get the fastest lap against his teams wishes. When he came out from the pits Leclerc was only 2 seconds behind but on the last lap Max managed to still finish over 5 seconds ahead of Leclerc. The race finished with Max on the top step followed by Leclerc, Perez, Sainz, Norris, Alonso, Hamilton, Russell, Pierre Gasly and Stroll in the top 10.

The talk of the weekend was track limits as we saw from Friday a lot of drivers have their lap times deleted. This didn’t stop there and during the Race on Sunday there was penalties being thrown like they were nothing. On the radio we heard most drivers also report the drivers ahead of them. As this wasn’t enough, after the race Aston Martin also filed an appeal with the FIA to review the infringements for track limits as Aston Martin claim that the FIA missed some. Later on, after the race the FIA came out with an additional 12 penalties split between 8 drivers and the order of the race changed slightly to Verstappen, Leclerc, Perez, Norris, Alonso, Sainz, Russell, Hamilton, Stroll and Gasly.

Let’s not forget about Lando Norris which after a brilliant drive he manages to hold off Lewis Hamilton to take 4th spot and also taking driver of the day award, this shows that the field behind Max Verstappen is about to get more interesting and get some more competition there as no one can keep up with Max Verstappen currently.

We now head to Silverstone next week where we should see some more teams get some more upgrades to their cars which again will make it more interesting in the midfield. Who were your biggest winners and biggest losers of the weekend?

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