Max Verstappen extended his world championship lead in imperious style with a dominant victory at the Styrian Grand Prix, team-mate Sergio Pérez narrowly missed out on the podium and finished fourth at the Red Bull Ring.
At the home of Red Bull, Verstappen proved why he is at the top of the standings, the Dutchman reacted brilliantly off the line from pole and simply never had to look back. Title rival Lewis Hamilton had no answers to Verstappen’s pace and more importantly his ability to look after his tyres, all the world champion could do was watch Verstappen drive away into the distance.
The win extends Verstappen’s lead over Hamilton to eighteen points, putting Verstappen in further control of the championship.
“I am super happy to win here and doing it at home at the Red Bull Ring is always so special. I had a really enjoyable race, the car was working well and I always enjoy driving on this track. I just focused on my own race, concentrating on hitting the apexes in the places I wanted to, looking after the tyres and it worked out well.
“You never know how competitive or how close it’s going to be on a Sunday and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting it to be like it was today as the long run pace between the two teams was very closely matched all weekend. Overall, we’ve had a really positive weekend and of course it’s not going to be completely the same next week.
“Everyone else will also learn from this race so we will of course try and do even better and keep improving ourselves so we can stay ahead. It’s a whole Team effort so thank you very much to everyone here and back at the factory for another great win today.”
“It’s a shame to miss out on the double podium” – Sergio Pérez
Unfortunately for Red Bull Racing it wasn’t a double podium at home, as Sergio Pérez narrowly missed out on third by just half a second to Valtteri Bottas.
It wasn’t a brilliant race for Pérez, the Mexican who started in fourth managed to get past Lando Norris in the opening stages for third. However a slow first pit-stop for Pérez saw Bottas who was behind Pérez at the time and was recovering from his three-place grid penalty, overcut the Mexican driver.
Pérez couldn’t get close enough to overtake Bottas after the opening stop, Red Bull then decided to repeat what they did with Verstappen in France and pit Pérez again, giving him much fresher and faster tyres to hunt down the Mercedes.
It so nearly worked yet again, unfortunately the race was one lap too short for it to be a success as Pérez crossed the finish line just half a second behind Bottas. The race left Pérez disappointed not to make the podium at the team’s home, although he is fully aware he gets to try again this weekend.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out today and it’s a shame to miss out on the double podium. We just needed one more lap and we could have done it, that’s all it would have taken. I think the soft tyre was slightly worse than expected this race and that hurt us towards the end of the first stint, we also had a slow stop that impacted the race as we gave the position to Bottas.
“The Team tried something different with the two-stop strategy but we got caught out by traffic, but that’s how it is sometimes and we had to try something. I’m really happy for the Team today though because Max won, he did a great job and I know we have a strong package. I look forward to next weekend where we will try again to step up on the podium together.”
