The 'Can''t be worse than last week' Austrian GP thread.

It's hard to say its all Ferrari's bad luck. Operationally they got it wrong for Vettel in the pits and pitting Leclerc very early.

The Canada penalty has been done to death, but ultimately it was down to Vettel making a mistake which caused the Stewards to make a decision. Austria was just a case of Verstappen being the quicker, so luck didn't really come into it, he got beaten by the faster car at the end.

Could Leclerc have gone quicker, but was told to manage a gap, when in fact if he had built a bigger lead Max would never have caught him? Did Ferrari even think that Max would come into the play?

 

It was obvious at least 15 laps before the end that Max was a threat. Ferrari must have seen this. Two options for Ferrari at that point, stretch the lead or pit for a softer tyre. Both a gamble but I feel Ferrari are scared to make defining decisions.

 

Or bunch the field to help Vettel?

 

Just noticed that Lewis was about 64 seconds behind Max! So only about 5 seconds from being lapped!!!!
Merc really do have an overheating issue to resolve quickly.

 

Nah, he was only 23 secs behind.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/2019/austrian-grand-prix/results

Bottas' fastest lap over a second slower than Verstappen's!

 

Oops. I thought they were the gap times between the drivers not the gap to the winner

 

After digesting things for a few days (I was on holiday when the race was on so needed to watch it again properly rather than on my phone with bad WiFi) I think this is the most reasonable view to take here.

YES! This is what I want when I think of "close racing". The Arnoux/Villeneuve dual is always referenced as a highlight of F1 racing over the years and rightly so because of the "hard racing" combined with respect each showed for the other. Verstappen has precious little of the latter and I fear he's going to reap what he sows in the future.

This was my thought too immediately after the incident, we shouldn't have one rule for street tracks and one rule for tracks with run-off should we?

However, I forget which journalist I heard it from (think it may have been Will Buxton) but on the flipside if they had punished Verstappen it would have created a precedent where if a defending driver feels he's lost the corner, he can just keep driving alongside towards the run-off then claim he was forced off when he runs out of room and ask for the overtaking driver to receive a penalty. This is why on balance I think it was probably (just about) the right decision. It just sticks in the craw a bit because it was Verstappen!