There was no doubt about it on this opening race weekend in Austria. Despite an extremely late start to the season, despite reliability difficulties in testing, and despite the off track distractions going on in our world, Mercedes dominated in the first race of the season, picking up where they left off as the 2019 world champions of Formula One.
Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas, who posted the quickest qualifying lap on Saturday, raced out of the gates in first and never looked back. The Finnish driver has long raced in the shadow of Mercedes’ other driver, six-time world champ Lewis Hamilton, but on this day, it was Bottas who proved to be more reliable. It is not easy to hold the lead for 71 laps, but that is exactly what he did, holding off moves from Hamilton, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and even McLaren’s Lando Norris to overtake him, and remaining in the lead from start to finish. He crossed the line just half a second before Hamilton, but it was enough to earn his first victory of the season and give Mercedes an early lead in the Constructors’ championship standings.
Mercedes was projected by nearly every expert, such as F1.com’s Lawrence Barretto, to finish atop the standings for the seventh straight season. They certainly showed why that was on Sunday morning.
While it was a day to remember for Bottas, it was a day to forget for Hamilton. It was a day that was filled with opportunity all the way up until the final three laps of the race. As he came around a tight turn on lap 68, Hamilton slammed into Red Bull’s Alexander Albon, knocking Albon out of the race, and resulting in Hamilton being slapped with a five second penalty by the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile). It was costly for the 2019 world champ, as he crossed the finish line second, but ended up in fourth, one spot removed from the podium. Instead, Leclerc and Norris took second and third respectively, a huge surprise of a victory for the two young drivers. In fact, this was Norris’ first ever podium win.
Hamilton has a history of giving McLaren drivers’ their first podium win as a result of one of his penalties. In the final race of the 2019 season, Hamilton was penalized for a collision, meaning Carlos Sainz took third, instead of Hamilton. It was Sainz’s first podium win.
After the race, both Hamilton and Albon commented on the incident.
“I felt like I had done the move already and I was already focused on Bottas in front,” Albon told F1.com. “[The contact] was just so late. There’s always the risk of over overtaking on the outside, but I gave [Lewis] as much space as I really could.”
Hamilton saw the incident differently.
“A really unfortunate scenario with Alex,” he stold F1.com. “It really felt like a racing incident but either way, I’ll take whatever penalty they feel I deserve and move forwards.”
A year older, and with his sights set on new opportunities at Ferrari next season, Sainz kept a quick pace throughout this race, finishing fifth, and scoring 10 points for McLaren. On the day, McLaren was one of just two teams who had both drivers score points, as points are only awarded to finishers in places 1 through 8. They earned 25 points and will head into next week’s race, also to be held in Austria, ranked second in the standings, just behind Mercedes who took 37 points behind Bottas’ win and Hamilton’s fourth place finish.
While Mercedes and McLaren started the season off on a high note, Red Bull had one of their worst races in the recent seasons. Top driver Max Verstappen was running in second before he had an unforeseen power problem, leading to a near shutdown of the car. He went into the pits, but after a minute of futile efforts by the pit crew, Verstappen frustrated, got out of the car and walked straight into the locker room, stunned, and frustrated that a podium finish was taken away because of car problems. Later on, Albon was hit by Hamilton, causing him to retire from the race. Although Hamilton got a penalty, he still scored for Mercedes, while Albon, the innocent driver in the collision, was rewarded with a DNF next to his name in the results. Team Principal Christian Horner was dejected about this performance, especially because his drivers were on top of their game, as both were in the top five when they were forced to retire. It was simply everything else that turned a day of racing for points, into one in which they left the track with both drivers having retired from it.
A surprise to many was the number of drivers that were knocked out of this first race, the majority due to car trouble. Of course, there was Albon and Verstappen, but they were joined by seven others. Lance Stroll was knocked off the track on lap 22, Daniel Kvyat saw his left rear tire explode with just one lap to go, and Kimi Raikkonen lost his front tire around lap 30. Daniel Riccardo, in his second season with Renault, had his car overheat, so as a precaution, Renault took him out of the race. Haas also had a rough day, as both Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean had to retire.
All in all, race number one was a success, and played out in the way many expected it to, with both Mercedes drivers finishing in the top 10.
Next week, F1 will be back, with the Steiermark Grand Prix starting at 8:10 am on Sunday morning here in the United States.
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