As the cars lined up on the starting grid, Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel did not take the eighth position he qualified in as he was given a 3-place penalty due to obstruction to Alpine’s Fernando Alonso during qualifying. This moved him down to 11th place.
Spectators were allowed into the Red Bull Ring, a big contrast from last year when the stands were empty. A large contingent of Dutch fans were cheering for Max Verstappen, who started from pole position.
As the lights turned green, the Red Bull driver got off to a great start up the slope, as McLaren’s Lando Norris dived in behind. However, Turn 3 saw Esteban Ocon caught between Haas F1’s Michael Schumacher and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi, which resulted in his suspension being damaged and disabling his car.
Out came the Safety Car to convoy the racers as crews worked to get the Alpine out of the way, the first non-finisher of the race. Pirelli said the early Safety Car would favour the soft tyre runners by reducing wear and degradation at a crucial point in the race, when the cars were full of fuel.
The clearing operation was quick and by lap 4, the Safety Car was back in, and racing resumed. Verstappen shot off, and Norris found Sergio Perez, who had closed in while in convoy, starting to pressure him for the position. But the McLaren driver held his place tight and Perez had no choice but to go wide – into the gravel – and dropped down the field to around tenth. His departure allowed Lewis Hamilton to slot into third place.
The incident between Norris and Perez attracted the attention of the Stewards who discussed it and decided that the McLaren driver would receive a 5-second penalty. The news probably distracted Norris and additional bad news was that Hamilton had managed to sneak past him as well. As Hamilton took over second place, his team mate Valtteri Bottas started to close in on Norris as well, aiming to move him another place down.
Verstappen was 10 seconds away from Hamilton and was nearing the back markers, so things would get tricky.
On lap 31, Norris and Bottas came into the pits together. With the time penalty Norris had to serve, Bottas was able to get off ahead of the McLaren back onto the track. Verstappen also came in for hard tyres.
At the halfway mark, only two drivers – Carlos Sainz and Kimi Raikkonen – had yet to come into the pits. Both had started on hard tyres. All the other drivers had come in and returned, and Verstappen had a lead of 15 seconds.
The duel for seventh was a close fight between McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, Perez and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. As the Ferrari driver tried to get past Perez, contact occurred and Leclerc got bumped off into the gravel. Commentators expected that Perez would – or should – get the same penalty as Norris as the incident was largely similar.
On lap 47, Leclerc had caught up with Perez and tried again to get past – and the same departure from the track occurred! Perez was simply refusing to give up his sixth position.
As for Hamilton, damage to the rear end of the car was affecting his progress and the 20-second gap from Verstappen was way too big. Bottas was right behind and was asked not to hassle his team mate. In the end, the team decided that Nottas would go after Verstappen and Hamilton would try to prevent Norris from getting past.
But on lap 54, Norris slipped past Hamilton and that brought Hamilton in to switch to hard tyres. The pit stop didn’t lose him the fourth place but extended the gap to 21 seconds.
Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda Tsunoda was having a bad day. After one 5-second penalty for a pit lane infringement, he was again given a second one on lap 57 as he left the pit lane incorrectly.
With a 26-second lead, Verstappen could even come back in for another set of hard tyres to be on the safe side, and kept his position as 10 laps remained.
Leclerc’s forced excursions into the gravel had let Ricciardo grab sixth position and he was desperately fighting to move up as Perez kept moving further away.
As 4 laps remained and Verstappen’s win was almost assured, attention was on Williams’ George Russell who was performing impressively to move up to tenth, but Alonso was aiming to displace him. Alonso, the old driver had the experience but Russell was showing a lot of determination too. But on lap 68, the Alpine driver outsmarted him at Turn 4 and got by, denying the British driver of the points position.
In the closing stages of the race, as attention was focussed at the front, there was drama at the back as Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen collided, with both cars heading off into the gravel.
The Dutchman took the chequered flag again, making it four wins and though his race was fairly easy, he still set the fastest lap to claim and extra point.
Keyword: F1/Round 9: Highlights & Provisional Results For 2021 Austrian Grand Prix