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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Formula One: Verstappen's victory march for his orange army

By Don Kennedy
Hawkes Bay Today·
8 Jul, 2021 06:00 PM8 mins to read

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Fourth victory at Red Bull Ring for Max Verstappen. Photo / Don Kennedy

Fourth victory at Red Bull Ring for Max Verstappen. Photo / Don Kennedy

Don Kennedy on Formula One

Social distancing was not evident at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, as a near capacity crowd, led by the "Orange Army" which follows championship leader Max Verstappen, witnessed another dominant victory for the Dutchman in the Austrian GP.

This race was the third of a triple-header that began at the Paul Ricard circuit in Provence, France, and moved on to the Styrian GP just over a week and a half ago, and then last weekend's Austrian GP, both at the Red Bull Ring.

This latest victory, his third in a row and fifth for the season, gives the Red Bull driver a relatively comfortable 32-point lead over Lewis Hamilton in the drivers' championship, while Red Bull lead Mercedes by 44 points in the Constructors' title race.

Since that unfortunate crash for Verstappen in the Azerbaijan GP in Baku, when his left rear tyre exploded when he was leading with four laps to go, Verstappen and his team have hardly put a foot wrong.

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There was a wobble at the first corner in France after the start that cost him the lead, which he got back, but since then he has made every post a winner. Following on from his victory in the Styrian GP, Verstappen started as a hot favourite from pole position, with Lando Norris in the McLaren alongside, the Brit's best qualifying of his career so far. He actually missed pole by only two hundreths of a second. The Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton started 3rd and 4th respectively.

The closest anyone got to Verstappen was at the start and then when the field was bunched together behind the safety-car on lap 2 to enable marshals to remove Esteban Ocon's stricken Alpine from the circuit.

On that re-start, Verstappen was off and gone, building a sizeable lead over initially Norris, later on Hamilton, and then eventually Bottas, who was allowed past Hamilton by his team as Hamilton had some car damage from hitting the kerbs too hard. Verstappen even had the luxury to pit for a second time towards the end of the race for fresh tyres to go for an extra point for fastest lap, which he duly got. The ease and margin of his victory surprised even Verstappen.

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"Incredible to be honest, the car was on rails," he said. "I mean every tyre set that we put on, it was really enjoyable to drive. Pretty insane."

"I'm a bit amazed myself how today went. I didn't expect it to be like this. Yeah, incredible job by everyone to deliver something like this. Of course, when you go into the weekend everyone sees you as the favourite but it's never easy to deliver what we did today. So, yeah, a great effort by the whole team and also by Honda. I think the whole package, these two weeks, especially here, has been incredible."

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner noted this was the first time Verstappen had achieved a grand slam in F1, which is pole position, the race win and fastest lap.

"For us its now five races in a row that we've won. A phenomenal performance from the team. I'm proud of everything they do. But we have to keep going, we're not even halfway there yet."

By contrast, Mercedes' boss Toto Wolff is frustrated and feeling the pressure of facing defeat for the first time in seven years, but is trying to put a positive spin on it, after Bottas finished 2nd and Hamilton 4th.

"The results look, I think, worse in terms of pace than we were," Wolff stated. "We were stuck behind the McLaren, and I think in pace we probably could have been there – maybe not enough to win the race but right there, which is a step forward."

"Overall, I think damage limitation maybe. I think we go to Silverstone and blow everybody away, finish one and two, 30 seconds in advance of everybody else."

Tongue firmly in his cheek when he made that comment, Wolff must be worried about what is happening, even though he understandably refuses to concede defeat.

"Morale is good, but we have to be working on these feelings actively because if you come from a run of seven world championship titles, everything looks like a defeat whatever result you might have. We finished second and fourth, it's not the end of the world."

For Bottas, second place was some redemption after recent below average performances that has led to the media speculation he could be replaced by George Russell before the end of the season.

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"One place better than last week and I started fifth, so I think, as a team, we got some decent points considering the gap we have to Red Bull in terms of pure pace," Bottas stated, perhaps hoping Wolff would appreciate his "as a team" comment.

"The last two weekends have been more positive, cleaner weekends, and more solid Sundays, as it should be, so yeah hopefully I can carry this moment and I just try to look ahead."

Bottas may consider he is gaining momentum, but for Hamilton it feels like the opposite as he sees the chances of a record-breaking eighth title literally going up the road as Verstappen starts to think a first world championship could become a reality.

"We're miles away from them, so we've got a lot of work to do," a desperate-sounding Hamilton, who has renewed his Mercedes contract for another two years, told Sky F1. "We need all hands on deck, which I know there are. I said before the race it would be very hard to beat Max, of course. But it was obviously disappointing to lose so much downforce on the rear of the car and not be able to hold onto second place. So, a lot of points lost today."

He was at a loss to understand how he may have damaged his car for going over the kerbs, because he couldn't recall doing so. Kimi Raikkonen in the Alfa Romeo had a good race in the early stages, but it all came undone towards the end of the race. He got a radio message from his race engineer telling him he had received a warning for exceeding track limits at Turn 10, and Kimi, normally a man of few words, was furious. "Why the **** did you tell me now?" he yelled. "If you don't tell me, how the **** should I know?"

Shortly thereafter, perhaps as the red mist clouded his visor, Raikkonen collided with Sebastian Vettel and was given a 20-second penalty, which meant he was classified 16th, albeit a meaningless penalty. He thought his collision with Vettel was a "misunderstanding" but former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, described it as "embarrassing".

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The race stewards were in a penalty-imposing mood. No less than 11 drivers were summoned post-race to the steward's room, which must have resembled a principal's office in a reform school.

That was in addition to the various penalties dished out before and during the race. Vettel got a three-place grid penalty for impeding Fernando Alonso on his flying lap in Q2. That meant Alonso qualified 14th but he believed he could have qualified in the top six had he not been impeded. In horse racing, if a horse interferes with another horse, the offending horse is relegated to a placing behind the horse that was impeded. Yet even with a penalty, Vettel still started three places ahead of Alonso, although the latter did eventually race to a 10th place, passing Russell with two laps to go, depriving the Williams driver from scoring his first points for Williams.

Norris got a five-second penalty for forcing Sergio Perez off at Turn 5 after the Mexican driver had tried to overtake Norris around the outside. Horner, Perez's team boss, felt it was just "hard racing" and didn't warrant a penalty.

"It is at the beginning of the race and, in Michael Masi's [FIA Race Director] words you learn in karting already that if you go there you will end up in the gravel."

Perez later got penalised, twice, for forcing Charles Leclerc off at the same corner and later apologised to the Ferrari driver, saying his actions weren't typical of his character.

Yuki Tsunoda got two penalties for going over the white line at the pit entrance, and Nicholas Latifi and Nikita Mazepin were penalised 30 seconds for not slowing sufficiently for double-waved yellow flags.

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There is now a two-week break before F1 goes to Silverstone for the British GP. The UK government will allow a full capacity crowd to attend the venue, which can accommodate 132,000 fans. Europe and the UK are slowly but surely returning to normal despite the Covid-19 pandemic still being prevalent in the community.

Verstappen's Orange Army will likely have a full contingent again as their 23-year old star marches on at great speed towards a first world championship, and Mercedes will be searching the bottom draw to find a way to stop him.

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