Styria – the editors’ tops and flops

A week after the chaos of the late-race excitement, the second Grand Prix of the 2020 season was calmer, more orderly. The main source of adrenaline was the battle among the outsiders for 4th place (Albon vs. Pérez), which turned into 5th place between Pérez, Norris, Stroll, and Ricciardo. Apart from that and the Vettel-Leclerc collision in the first lap, there were few major battles on the track. The standings provide a clearer picture than in the first meeting, already held at the Red Bull Ring.

The 2019 king has regained his favored position, at the top of his F1 peers. The Brit’s weekend had started badly, clearly not confident with his machine, six-tenths behind Verstappen in the dry on Friday, his mechanics made some setup changes after FP2. Perfect timing, the Brit dominated the rest of the weekend.

A domination over two days. Especially on Saturday, where Hamilton crushed the competition with a Q3 lap… one second and two tenths faster than Verstappen. All that with a car set up for dry conditions, while the rain was intensifying!

A little less on top on Sunday, Hamilton contained Verstappen and didn’t fall into the trap of his aggressive strategy. His race was enough to give him his first victory of the 2020 season. 2007-2020, 14 seasons with at least one win for the Briton. The first victory also towards the dreamed quest for a seventh world title? The road is still long!

The young McLaren driver finally makes it into our top 3 thanks to his epic race finish. A hero in the first GP, Lando Norris was set to fall back into the ranks.

Ninth on the grid, loaded with medication after back and rib pain, the Brit benefited from the help of his teammate Carlos Sainz, who let him pass at the end of the race. With fresher mediums (he stopped on the 38th lap), he moved from 8th place to 5th place in the last two laps!

Opportunist, Norris first benefited from the contact between Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo, to pass the Australian, who was pushed off the track by Stroll at turn 3.

Then he went on to overtake the Canadian’s Racing Point in the last DRS zone, and the Mexican’s before the final corner, struggling after his collision with Albon’s Red Bull.

The naysayers will say that Norris was lucky… but fortune favors the bold, even in F1! The main protagonist describes his race as the best of his career in the premier discipline. Better than during his first podium at the Austrian Grand Prix. This top placement finally rewards two brilliant weekends for Norris, who sits in third place in the driver standings, with 25 points. His team McLaren is second among constructors, ahead of Red Bull!

At first glance at the rankings, one might think that Racing Point lost a lot of points along the way, especially in the first Grand Prix. Even in the second, Pérez contended for fourth place only to fall back to sixth position. And both the Mexican and Stroll were handicapped by the rain with average qualifying.

However, it is now official that Racing Point can aim for big points or even podiums at the start of the season. The first part of the race showed us: the Renaults and the McLarens were overtaken with ease. And Pérez challenged Albon’s Red Bull at the end of the race.

11 places gained for Pérez, 5 for Stroll: yes, the copy of the 2019 Mercedes works, with good grip in fast corners. Will the technical team continue on its path or collapse quickly? “Developments are planned,” promises Otmar Szafnauer, the boss of Racing Point. Meanwhile, the threat already comes from Renault, which filed a protest with the FIA on Sunday night regarding the legality of the RP01.

In the tops, we could have also highlighted Max Verstappen, the only challenger to the Mercedes team this weekend: on the front row in the rain during qualifying and who delivered a great battle with Bottas at the very end of the Grand Prix: what an overtaking maneuver on the outside in the fifth corner!

THE FLOP 3

Mattia Binotto and Ferrari have made him their leader for the future, but Charles Leclerc admitted himself: he “acted like a fool this weekend!” Too eager to make up for his average Saturday in the rain, eliminated in Q2 (11th), the Monegasque driver tried to overtake 3 cars at once in the third corner. By insisting, without considering that his teammate Vettel (who had a poor start from 10th place) was also going to take the inside of the corner, Leclerc dug the grave for his own team. The crash resulted in both cars retiring, just like in Interlagos in 2019!

Finally, the shovels were already out since the beginning of the weekend: the Ferrari remains just as uncompetitive. In the middle of the pack in FP2 during the qualifying and race simulations, the SF 1000 would certainly have battled with Renault, McLaren, and Racing Point for the 5th place.

Still young (22 years old), Leclerc will have to arm himself with patience this season and accept that his car, barring a miracle, will not give him the opportunity to compete for the title. In terms of image, this race Sunday was catastrophic for Scuderia: the only team with two retirements, both Italian cars in the pit one after the other after the first lap to repair damage. Mercedes is already far too ahead. Can Mattia Binotto even last the whole season at the helm of Scuderia?

This time, the Thai driver did not imagine for a single second winning the Grand Prix. In the match with Verstappen until the final moments of Q3, Albon took six-tenths and five positions compared to the Dutchman. Starting 7th, he climbed to 4th place after 8 laps of the race. But his pace afterward was significantly lower compared to his garage neighbor. After his pit stop on lap 25, Verstappen was even ahead of Albon… who hadn’t yet changed his tires! It was the same at the end of the race, when the Dutchman tried to get the fastest lap with soft tires.

Albon was never able to trouble Bottas either: it was mainly Pérez who gave him a scare at the end of the race by catching up and causing a collision, which almost made him lose the first 12 points of his season. Verstappen at least stood out against the Mercedes. It’s tough at the same time to race alongside Red Bull’s gem, Pierre Gasly knows something about that!

This third flop also feels like a disappointment: the Williams driver started off strong on Saturday, with an extraordinary 12th fastest time in the rain, just eight thousandths behind Leclerc’s Ferrari!

But the dream was short-lived in the race: in 11th place, Russell cracked at the restart after the Safety Car. Battling with Stroll and Magnussen in the 4th lap, the Williams driver lost the front and went into the gravel trap at the left-hand curve of the fifth corner, rejoining at the back of the pack behind his teammate Nicholas Latifi.

Shame because we would have really seen Russell’s pace in the pack against his rivals. The man himself said: “who knows what could have happened”…

Answer maybe in a week on the winding track of the Hungaroring. One thing is certain at this hour: the 2020 Williams is not out of the running, especially when driven by the hopeful from the Mercedes program.

Other potential flop, Pierre Gasly and AlphaTauri, pleasant surprises of the qualifications, with Ocon or Russell. Gasly didn’t benefit long from his nice 7th place on the grid, being hit by Ricciardo’s Renault on the right-rear, in the first corner of the first lap.

So, drop in tire pressure, suspension problem? The explanation remains unclear but Gasly inexorably fell back in the standings, 15th (two stops), only ahead of the two Williams.