We didn’t have high hopes of an exciting event at the Red Bull Ring heading into last weekend. Verstappen and Red Bull have been impressive around the Austrian track in recent years and the straightline speed of the RB18 raised fears of a processional race and dominant victory for the reigning champion. But we were wrong.
As Matt Kew shows in our in-depth report, some of Ferrari’s 2022 weaknesses were still apparent in the Austrian Grand Prix but the F1-75 excelled on two crucial elements, race pace and tyre preservation. Leclerc, one of the undoubted stars of the season, was also brilliant once again and his first pass on Verstappen, not to mention later dealing with a throttle problem, was impressive.
For Verstappen, the race became an exercise in damage limitation, which he managed well, helped by Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari fiery engine failure. Leclerc will need more wins like that – and no more Ferrari blunders – if he is to chip away at the 38-point gap to Verstappen in the standings.
If the Austrian GP itself provided more action than we expected, some of what happened away from the track gave serious cause for concern, as shown in our Pit + Paddock section. The behaviour of some of the ‘fans’ was unacceptable and F1 needs to move decisively to stamp it out.
On a more positive note, Robert Wickens has made a remarkable recovery from the terrible injuries he sustained at Pocono in 2018. The ex-DTM and IndyCar star talks to Charles Bradley about how he’s started winning again in our special interview.
The World Endurance Championship stepped up a notch last week. As well as the new Ferrari Hypercar breaking cover, Peugeot’s radical-looking 9X8 made its debut at Monza, where Glickenhaus also had its best showing yet. Gary Watkins was there to report on how the grandfathered LMP1-based Alpine defeated Toyota in a dramatic and controversial encounter.
Our Shelsley Walsh Classic Nostalgia preview heads the 17-page National section covering UK motorsport, while we also pick out the top five Porsche privateers of the Group C/GTP era.
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