Amazing day for Max and all his Dutch fans
MAX VERSTAPPEN took advantage of a disastrous double no-finish for Mercedes to win the Austrian Grand Prix for Red Bull yesterday as Sebastian Vettel regained the lead in the Formula One championship.
Lewis Hamilton lost the lead when Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas broke down to cause a virtual safety car (VSC) and his own race ended having lost fuel pressure.
Vettel started his Ferrari in sixth place, having been penalised three grid places for impeding Renault’s Carlos Sainz in qualifying on Saturday, but fought back to third. With Hamilton failing to score, Vettel regained the championship lead by a single point.
Verstappen, who started fourth, held off a late charge from Kimi Raikkonen in the other Ferrari to celebrate his fourth career victory and first of the season by 1.5 seconds.
The triple-header of consecutive French, Austrian and British grand prix concludes next week at Silverstone with the championship now delicately poised.
“It was amazing, very hard to manage the tyres, lot of blistering, but we managed to hang on,” Verstappen said. “It was amazing to win at the Red Bull Ring with so many Dutch fans here.
“I needed to catch up with the points, today was a very good day for me and I hope we can continue like this.”
Verstappen is fifth in the standings, 53 points behind Vettel who has has 146 to Hamilton’s 145.
Mercedes had dominated the 4.318km Red Bull Ring in Spielberg since the Austrian Grand Prix returned to the calender in 2014 and that looked set to continue until an inexplicable error.
When Bottas suffered a failure of hydraulic pressure and lost gearbox function, he trundled to a halt on lap 14.
Red Bull and Ferrari brought in both drivers for fresh tyres, but Mercedes did not make the same call for Hamilton.
The Briton immediately realised the severity of the situation, but could not find the pace to recover. When he eventually pitted on lap 25, he re-emerged ahead of Vettel but behind both Red Bulls and Raikkonen.
“That is totally on us, sorry,” an apologetic engineer told him.
That continued a terrible race for Mercedes who began with Bottas chasing a first victory from pole this season.
A poor start dropped him to fourth, though he recovered to second behind Hamilton and they pulled away until the saftey car. Vettel took advantage of the bad luck elsewhere to make the podium and his outcome was made even stronger when Hamilton retired on lap 64.
“Obviously it would’ve been nice to start further up, I was left with no place to go at turn one and lost the momentum,” Vettel said.
“It was damage limitation, but the pace was very good and the tyre management was very good. A positive day, but it could’ve been better.”
Verstappen had a four-second lead to Daniel Ricciardo when he took the lead and grew his advantage until his teammate, with a blister on his left rear tyre, fell behind Raikkonen.
Ricciardo then pitted at the same time Vettel squeezed beyond Hamilton on the 39th lap.
Verstappen led Raikkonen by more than six seconds but with everyone behind the Dutchman seemingly protecting tyres, he was unchallenged.
Hamilton had to pit again on lap 53 and came out fifth behind Ricciardo, but took that place back within a lap when the Red Bull’s engine failed to ensure no happy returns on Ricciardo’s 29th birthday.
However, Hamilton miserable day ended before the chequered flag in a race Mercedes must quickly put behind them.
“We’ve got to understand how we went wrong at both ends,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “Ultimately, we have to take positives where we can. We were the quickest. We’ve got to keep working hard.”
Raikkonen pushed late, but could not launch a genuine attack and Verstappen earned Red Bull a first victory at their home circuit. – dpa WESTERN PROVINCE and KZN Coastal were the big winners at the Old Mutual iWYZE Under-18 tournament in Pietermaritzburg over the weekend.
The Western Province girls beat the Eastern Province girls 2-1 in the final. Western Province’s Julia Hoal captured the Striker of the Tournament award and was included in the South Africa Under-18 team who will take on their Australian counterparts in a series next week. South Africa assistant coach Bevan Bennett, the former Border stalwart, says he is excited to see how the SA girls will perform against the Australians, as it will give a good indication of the standard of hockey at this level in South Africa.
The boys’ section was a closely contested affair, with KZN Coastal taking the honours 1-0 over KZN Inland. Matthew Dewar from Selborne College was named Player of the Tournament.