Verstappen Extends Lead In Championship With Austria Win

Calum Gill 15:52 04/07/2021

Max Verstappen has won the Austrian Grand Prix to extend his lead in the driver's championship to 32 points over title rival Lewis Hamilton.

The Dutchman was utterly dominant for the second week running at the Red Bull Ring, winning by 18 seconds over Hamilton's Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas and a further 2 seconds ahead of McLaren's Lando Norris, who took his third podium of the season, despite a five-second-penalty for allegedly pushing Sergio Perez's Red Bull off the track in the early laps. Hamilton was fourth after a troubled race in which suspected damage saw Mercedes tell him to let Bottas through.

Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) was 5th after a solid drive which saw him finish 0.700 seconds ahead of Perez, after the latter was given 2 five-second-penalties for two seperate contacts with Charles Leclerc' Ferrari. Daniel Ricciardo did well to move up from 13th on the grid to finish seventh, ahead of Leclerc in eighth and Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) in ninth. George Russell agonisingly missed out on scoring a point for Williams for the first time when he was passed for tenth place by Alpine's Fernando Alonso with three laps to go. 

-Full weekend results

Verstappen yet again unstoppable

Verstappen controlled the race at the front to send the thousands of Dutch fans who had travelled to Styria for the event into paroxysms of joy. He moved clear in the opening laps as Hamilton challenged Norris for second place in the first part of the race. It took Hamilton 20 laps before he could find a way past Norris at Turn Four, by which time Verstappen was nearly 10 seconds in front.

The Red Bull driver continued to pull away in the lead and it looked as if Hamilton, who went into the race talking about limiting the damage to his title hopes, would have to settle for a comfortable second. But the seven-time champion's race took a turn for the worse when he suffered floor damage - from running wide at the final corner, Mercedes suspected - and he began to struggle for both pace and with heavy tyre wear.

Hamilton fell back towards Bottas and Norris. Mercedes initially told the Finn to hold station behind Hamilton, Bottas was then told he was allowed to race his team-mate, and finally the two were ordered to swap places, the Briton letting Bottas by into Turn Three with 20 laps to go.

Norris passed Hamilton two laps later and the seven-time champion pitted for fresh tyres, and had to resign himself to fourth place. Norris chased Bottas all the way and finished only two seconds behind the Finn in an outstanding drive to the final podium place, despite being given a five-second penalty for pushing Red Bull's Sergio Perez wide as they battled around Turn Four on the safety car restart after Esteban Ocon had retired with damage on the first lap.

The rest of the field 

Russell finished in eleventh place, just ahead of a last-lap collision. In a bizarre incident, Kimi Raikkonen - who was in tweflth place at the time - appeared to make a misjudgement and drove his Alfa-Romeo into Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin as they were fighting with Russell, taking both cars out. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri), Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa-Romeo) and Nicholas Latifi (Williams) picked up the scraps from that incident to finish in that order behind Russell. Raikkonen and Vettel were classified as sixteenth and seventeenth respectively, ahead of the two Haas', with Mick Schumacher ahead of Nikita Mazepin.

Esteban Ocon was the only retirement after he came together with Giovinazzi on the opening lap. Contact with the latter saw Alpine's Ocon retire from the race after doing barely a mile in the race after his right-front suspension was knocked out of place.

2021 Austrian Grand Prix Classification