George Russell converted pole position into a commanding victory at the Austrian Grand Prix, leading a Mercedes 1-3 finish at the Red Bull Ring that extended the team’s advantage in the Constructors’ Championship over Ferrari.
Russell’s win marked a personal bounce back after a difficult stretch of races following his triumph at the season opener in Australia. Team mate Kimi Antonelli completed the strong result for Mercedes in third, with Max Verstappen splitting the two Silver Arrows in second aboard a heavily updated Red Bull. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc finished fifth and eighth respectively, a significant drop from Hamilton’s victory in Barcelona at the previous round.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff praised the team’s strategic execution and the points haul during F1 TV’s post-race show. “We are Constructors’ Championship guys, that’s what we all stand for, the team in Germany, the team in England, and we’ve made a good jump in terms of points this weekend,” Wolff said. “Obviously doing that with a 1-3, bouncing back after Barcelona, feels good.”
The team managed their strategy around a couple of Virtual Safety Car periods, bringing Russell in earlier than Antonelli to guard against the undercut while running an offset strategy with the Italian. “We kept it cool. We wanted to not be undercut, but also with Kimi we were confident enough to stretch it, to have an offset,” Wolff explained. “Both times we came out two seconds in front of the car that was the risk factor for us. The tyres held on well, they managed it well. It was one of the good weekends.”
Antonelli started fourth after yellow flags triggered by Verstappen’s Q3 crash compromised his qualifying. Wolff identified the opening laps as the area where his young driver left time on the table. “Maybe where the opportunity was, maybe where the race was lost, was ‘full attack’ in the first few laps,” Wolff said. “Pushing the braking points beyond everything he’d done all weekend just didn’t work out in the way it should have, but he had the quickest race times from then on, and that’s why he’s the championship leader at the moment.”
Verstappen’s pace in the updated Red Bull posed a genuine threat during the middle stint as the Dutchman closed on Russell. Wolff acknowledged the challenge but noted that dirty air ultimately limited Verstappen’s ability to mount a late charge. “It was exciting to see whether he would catch up at the end, and whether Kimi would catch up on him,” Wolff said, adding with a smile that F1 President and CEO Stefano Domenicali “told me it was good TV.”