Worth The Wait Although There Was A “Pandemic” On Track | Austrian Grand Prix 2020
After 217 days Formula One is finally back and it didn’t disappoint. All sorts of drama, on track and off track. Surprising performances, both great and bad. Reliability issues storming almost half of the grid. Absolute mental final results of the race, and there is a lot more to come.
Now we have the truth
After months of speculation based on pre-season testing results we are finally arrived to the time when every teams show their true speed. Racing Point launched their car in Barcelona back in March with a seemingly carbon copy of Mercedes’ 2019 winning car, W10, everyone was eager to see where will they end up on the grid. Ferrari also put a question mark with their mediocre performance in testing which was unusual compared to the last few years. Their power unit (PU) is obviously not looked as great compared to last year’s which they are suspected to do some tricks with it. Everyone was questioning how their completely redesigned power unit will affect Ferrari and their customers performance. Also, Mercedes and Red Bull is expected to be strong this season even if there is a slight doubt about Mercedes’ reliability and Red Bull’s stability.
Racing Point turns out to be strong as expected but they are still matched by McLaren who are able to qualify in P4 with Lando Norris. Perez and Stroll showed promising lap times in practice and qualy but cannot extract it on the race results as Stroll had a mechanical failure and Perez has 5 second penalty after failing to turn the pit limiter and finished P6.
Ferrari was dreadfully slow in all sessions and dropped to the midfield. They are struggling a lot with engine power and subsequently the amount of drag because their chassis was designed with last year’s power amount as the base. Sebastian Vettel axed out in Q2 and started the race in P11. Charles Leclerc narrowly escaped Q2 in P10 and finally qualified in P7 for Sunday.
Mercedes are on their own league after locking the front row by a margin of half a second to Verstappen in third. They have very fast cars and it looked very stable out on track. Red Bull is still behind the now “Black Arrows” by a quite some margin and tend to be closer to both Racing Point and McLaren in Austria.
DAS is drama
Before reviewing what happened on track lets take a look on the off track drama which mainly it was Red Bull versus Mercedes. After FP1, Red Bull officially protest the Dual Axis Steering (DAS) system that was introduced by Mercedes during pre-season testing. They claimed they want a clarity about the legality of DAS according to the rulebook. The final answer from the FIA is DAS is legal and we might see Red Bull try their own version of it.
Not only that, Red Bull also filled another protest ahead of the race asking for the stewards to review their decision to not to penalized Lewis Hamilton for failing to slow down during a yellow flag caused by Valtteri Bottas going off track at the final stage of Q3. After that the stewards reversed their decision and decided to give 3 grid place penalty to Lewis and handing P2 to Max Verstappen.
Pandemic on track
Not to be confused with the actual COVID-19 pandemic that is still happening across the whole world, with 9 retirements caused by each own failure in each car I think it’s safe to say that this first race is affected by it’s own pandemic. Verstappen is the first one to retire after he had a electrical failure which causing his engine to go into anti-stall mode and ultimately loss power. A few laps later his former teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, had his car limping after a cooling issues in the middle of a hot day in Red Bull Ring. Both Haas cars had brake problems which was not a surprise remembering their history for such problems. Lance Stroll also retired following a sensor issue while George Russell also forced to retire.
The strangest one would be Raikkonen who retired immidiately after safety car restart on lap 55 after his front right tyre weirdly came off from his car just at the last corner. This immediately prompted another safety car.
Towards the end of the race it’s Alex Albon and Daniil Kvyat who suffered a problem with their car. Albon had a similar problem with Verstappen while Kvyat had a left rear tyre puncture.
Ferrari engine is healthy but powerless
Surprisingly from all engine manufactures it’s Ferrari who are not having any problems with their power units. Their engine has been such a topic this weekend because of their massive lack of power throughout the week and possibly until the end of the season. They had to redesign their PU after a disclosed agreement with FIA regarding their 2019 power unit which allegedly had one or few tricks here and there. It’s really going from hero to zero for “The Prancing Horse” with last year’s ultra powerful engine which lead them to 3 wins despite using a not competitive chassis and aerodynamic package.
This power deficit was noticed as early as pre-season testing in March and it proved even more in Austria. Both Ferraris are even struggling to made it to Q3 and Sebastian Vettel failed to get out of Q2. Leclerc was narrowly escape Q2 in P10 and describe it in to the team as it’s crazy. Finally he qualified in P7 with almost a second difference with his pole lap last year.
Haas and Alfa Romeo was also struggling. Only one of those four Ferrari customer cars escaped Q1 in the hands of Romain Grosjean which qualified for P15.
The fact that Charles Leclerc managed to bring it home into the runner up position was more like a miracle. Remembering next race will be on the same track then I think Ferrari could struggle even more. They said that upgrade to their car should be available in Hungaroring for round 3, but I highly doubt it will create a difference because the power unit upgrade itself is frozen for the entire season of 2020.
Mercedes is buffed up but a bit fragile
A very promising start for Mercedes which dominate all sessions. Wearing a new shiny black livery to embodied #BlackLivesMatter movement these cars are beautiful both in terms of look and performance. Although there was some concern about its durability after James Vowles, Mercedes’ Chief of Strategy, instructed both drivers to not hitting the kerbs to avoid a critical gearbox problem for both cars. At first this only prevented Lewis to attack Valtteri when their gap is below a second. But furthermore, this thing gave them a massive headache upon safety car restarts to defend their position while also having to protect their car from failures. Ultimately their car is too fast to catch by other teams and Valtteri bring it home to win the long awaited first race of the season.
Disappointment for Red Bull
High expectations for Red Bull in these opening rounds did have some reasons. Max Verstappen won the two last races there and the last one was not easy at all because he was having a dismal start but still have ability to catch up. They are also seemed very confident with their RB16 throughout the pre-season testing although we smell a bit of stability issues because it spun around multiple times in Barcelona. Also just before they went to Austria, Honda announced an upgrade to their power unit which they hope will have more power to support both Red Bull and Alpha Tauri in this high speed track.
Max Verstappen who started from the front row after grid penalty for Lewis Hamilton, who failed to slow down during a yellow flag in Q3, had a decent start but couldn’t really gave a challenge for Valtteri Bottas before retired early after an electrical problem.
After that their only hope was Alexander Albon who performed brilliantly especially with his overtake to Sergio Perez shortly before the safety car is redeployed because of Raikkonen’s crash.
But, shortly after we had a short flashback to Brazil 2019 when Lewis punted Alex which costed him his maiden chance for a podium. This time it happened on turn 3 where Alex attempted to pass Lewis from the outside after a safety car restart with a similar fashion of punterino from Lewis which caused him a 5 second penalty just like the last time.
Albono dropped to the last place before he had to retire for a similar problem earlier with Max which means a double DNF for the home team and a very dissapointing start of the season.
Mega last lap from Lando
Lando Norris is really dropping a clutch type performance towards the end of the race. With a couple laps to go he was P5 behind Perez who had a 5 second penalty and passed him with a bit of a rough move and wheel banging with the Mexican driver.
On the final lap he was on the verge of a podium after Hamilton’s penalty. With the help from his engineer, Will Joseph, to deploy a couple of overtake mode this Twitch streamer got his maiden podium and become the third youngest man to have a podium in F1 history and also become the youngest Brit to do so. That last lap was mega and also set the fastest lap of the race which earned him another point to his bag. This will be a morale boost for Lando who was pretty much shadowed behind Carlos Sainz last year during most races.
My Driver of The Day: Charles Leclerc
This is a no brainer. Starting from P7 after narrowly managed to escape Q2 and still managed to go on the podium although benefitted from several penalties ahead was a fantastic performance from the Monegasque. Ferrari is just slow. Period. Yet this young man still managed to fight to P2 and did amazing overtake to Lando and a very brave late lunge into Perez couple of laps before the end of the race. Despite also a great perfomance from Lando and Valtteri but I think Charles really deserves it.
