Is it 5 for Perez? Or is it 10?
Me: How many penalties are you going to give out? The stewards: Yes
This weekend marked the third race of the first triple-header of the 2021 F1 season. It was back to the Red Bull Ring, and if I'm honest, I wasn't too pumped when FP1 rolled around on Friday morning. Of course, there were some differences between the Styrian and Austrian GP weekends, the biggest being the different tyre set and the orange army - the familiar presence of an orange smoke canister had been one of the most underrated losses in the 2020 season in my opinion.
Of course, supporters of number 33 came all the way out to Austria to see their man Super Max deliver. Compared to last weekend, there was arguably a lot more umming and ahhing over the Red Bull vs Mercedes debate, especially with the cooler track temperatures that seemed to favour the Merc power unit that we saw at the start of the weekend. To top this all off, news broke of Lewis Hamilton's signing of a new, 2-year contract with Mercedes that will take him to 2023 and the age of 38. This inevitably rekindled the Russell/Bottas debate among fans and journalists. Nevertheless, Max was as cool as a cucumber in practice, topping both FP1 and FP3 with the silver arrows for the most part at bay. Another standout performance for me during practice was the appearance of Alpine Academy and F2 driver Guanyu Zhou this season - certainly a driver to watch.
Honestly, I had no idea what would happen going into qualifying. I had many hopes for the session which I was reluctant to let take over my imagination too much. After all, I was desperate for George Russell to make a Q3 and for Lando Norris to achieve the redemption from Imola that he undoubtedly deserved - he had been rather spectacularly pushing and pushing the limit of his McLaren all throughout practice! All this aside, I wasn't expecting much from the second quali at the Red Bull Ring this time around. At the most, I was expecting the most exciting occurrence to be certain drivers opting to get into Q3 on mediums.
Yet, to my delight, I was met with a qualifying session that in my opinion set the tone for the whole weekend. With a brilliant performance from Super Max throughout; a strong set of times from the Alpha Tauris and George Russell finally reaching the Q3 session he had been working at on weekend after weekend, I was pleasantly surprised. I was forced to catch the end of Q3 from outside my local COVID-19 vaccination centre, which resulted in a slightly repressed but exuberant celebration when Norris delivered a superb flying lap in his McLaren which got him on the front row and a great result for Red Bull, securing pole for Verstappen and P3 for Perez. Once again, Mercedes were facing a formidable barrier to scoring big on Sunday - certainly a refreshing line up. Further down the grid was where I wasn't so happy to see both Ferraris out of the top 10 and yet another disappointing qualifying for Alpine - I look forward to seeing what they can bring with the regulation changes and Alonso and Ocon secured in their line up.
I must admit that I had butterflies in my stomach come lights out on Sunday. I was anxious for the first lap, especially considering the fortunes of last week's lap one. Sure enough, the safety car was soon deployed for Ocon who seems to have hit a bout of bad luck recently - not what he needs after signing a fairly hefty contract with Alpine.
Along with the VSC came the first 5-second penalty incident of the race, which to my part disbelief and part entertainment became a running theme of the race. Now, I've seen many people on social media disputing if the Perez/Norris incident was the fault of Norris or just simply racing. As much as Norris disputed that Perez was 'stupid' for expecting there to be a gap for him on the outside, I would be inclined to argue that Norris was particularly racy in this instance. Yet, I do believe the decision of the stewards to be harsh - I was fully expecting there to be no further action needed.
More brilliant racing was in the train involving Perez, Ricciardo, Leclerc, Gasly and Sainz in the midfield. The honey badger was particularly on form today, doing a brilliant job of holding back the Ferraris and only letting Sainz past at the closing stages of the race. The same cannot be said for Perez however. The two instances of 'attempting to run a driver off the track' as decreed by the stewards felt almost humorous to me and many others after he had been the victim of the same incident earlier on in the race. Needless to say, Leclerc was far from impressed on his team radio. Coupled with 2 other 5-second penalties for Tsunoda, I don't think I've ever seen as many time penalties handed out in a race!
As lap 71 closed in, with little drama at the front with Verstappen, who had quietly been getting on with it and creating an impressive gap between him and P2, my attention now switched to the Williams of George Russell desperately attempting to hold onto his point while racing superbly with Fernando Alonso. It was a great show, even though eventually the Alpine passed him. I have no doubt that this will not be the last we see of Russell in Q3 or in contention for the points - with the ever-growing incentive of a Mercedes seat next year, I have no doubt we will see more superb racing from number 63.
Alas, the other (rather childish) reason for me to be excited was the driver of the day vote. In the week leading up to the race, I had seen numerous comments on TikTok encouraging viewers to vote for Kimi Raikkonen in an attempt to add another iconic team radio to the collection. I eagerly voted on both mine and my Dad's phones, but it wasn't meant to be. We came in second, with Lando Norris winning the accolade - well deserved, but F1 TikTok will get their dream come true one day I am certain! Almost comically, after the announcement of driver of the day, Raikkonen made contact with Vettel on the last lap, which I must admit did make me chuckle considering the context.
Overall, I was satisfied with the podium, even though I believe Norris did deserve P2. Nevertheless, Bottas gained a much-needed podium this weekend, which I hope is the start of other good results for number 77.
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Comments (3)
Good write up of what was a much better than expected race
Thank you! I really enjoyed both the race and writing the article so expect more of this :)
Look forward to it