Max Verstappen has won Red Bull’s home Austrian Grand Prix while Lewis Hamilton suffered his first race retirement since 2016 and lost the Formula One championship lead to Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. On a bleak day for Mercedes, who suffered a double mechanical retirement for the first time since their return as a constructor in 2010, Verstappen and his 20,000-strong army of orange-shirted Dutch fans led the celebrations. Max Verstappen may have won Red Bull’s home race but with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas both failing to finish for Mercedes it dealt the team a body blow. Hamilton’s title lead has disappeared and the British driver now faces the herculean task of refocusing and bringing his best to the British Grand Prix next weekend.
Nobody could deny Verstappen deserved the victory, the first time Red Bull have won at the Red Bull Ring; he ran the race to perfection. As he showed exemplary control, pace and skill while managing his tyres, others suffered from blistering that severely hampered their races. But he did so while Mercedes fell to pieces in more ways than one on a day described by the team as cruel and brutal. Bottas, who had started from pole, retired on lap 14 with a hydraulic problem linked to the steering while Hamilton ground to a halt on lap 63 with a drop in pressure in the fuel system. Hamilton saw his lead of 14 points swing to a single-point deficit to Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who finished in third, behind his teammate Kimi Räikkönen.
The victory was the 20-year-old driver’s first of the season, and fourth of his career. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished a close second, with teammate Vettel third against expectations after a grid penalty had demoted him to sixth on the grid. The German, whose team did not invoke orders for Raikkonen to cede position as might have been expected, clawed back the overall lead by a single point from Mercedes rival Hamilton. Australian Daniel Ricciardo, Verstappen’s teammate who was celebrating his 29th birthday, was in a podium position but heavy rear tyre wear took its toll and he retired with a broken exhaust. Hamilton’s retirement with eight laps to go, and while in fourth place, ended a record run of 33 successive scoring finishes.
“It was amazing, very hard to manage the tyres, lot of blistering, but we managed to hang on,” said Verstappen of Red Bull’s first win at the circuit they own. Vettel now has 146 points to Hamilton’s 145 after nine rounds and with the Briton’s home race at Silverstone next weekend. Ferrari meanwhile took over at the top of the constructors’ standings, 10 points clear of Mercedes. Hamilton had already been on the back foot before he stopped, his car suffering lost fuel pressure, after a glaring strategy error by Mercedes had cost him the lead. The reigning champions had not been beaten in Austria since the race returned to the calendar in 2014 and seemed to be heading for a one-two when Valtteri Bottas retired with an hydraulics failure on lap 14. The Finn had started from pole, his first of the season, but lost out to Hamilton at the start and dropped to fourth before fighting back to second. Verstappen hit the front after Mercedes kept Hamilton out on track during a virtual safety car period that followed Bottas’s retirement, with the other contenders pitting for fresh tyres.
