As the roar of engines echoed around the Styrian mountains, for Max Verstappen it resounded surely as a rumbling but triumphal chorus, booming from the natural amphitheatre of the Red Bull Ring and acknowledging he is simply untouchable.
His afternoon centre stage with a win at the Austrian Grand Prix was as complete a demonstration of dominance as he has shown this season, while in his wake there was only frustration and almost discord for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes amid the trying times of understudying the champion elect.
As the 2023 season’s extended, celebratory parade for Verstappen and Red Bull continued, the orange‑clad swathes of fans in Austria were revelling in the success. This was another masterclass of the kind Verstappen is making look commonplace and sadly as a result somewhat uninspiring.
The superior pace of the Red Bull and his undoubted innate touch and ability combine with a fearsomely strong operational execution by his team to create a flawless whole. While the England cricket team brought hearts to mouths and fans dared to dream the impossible at Lord’s, Austria was an altogether more prosaic affair. Not so much dreaming as another strong dose of the reality of this season; for Verstappen’s fans this is nectar, for the neutral an increasingly predictable concoction. There was no suggestion of an upset, no Stokesian behemoth striding into the fray to put paid to the Red Bull juggernaut.
Instead there was Verstappen, cool and in command, untroubled and on this form unbeatable. He left the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in second, with his teammate Sergio Pérez coming back well from 15th to third.
What was telling, however, was the world champion demonstrating just the advantage he currently enjoys. Having dropped behind both Ferraris during the race, he dispatched them on track with insouciant ease on a weekend he has owned, with two pole positions and victory in both sprint and grand prix races.
Red Bull’s team principal, Christian Horner, said: “It was an outstanding weekend. I think Max has had tremendous pace all weekend. Qualifying, sprint race, now the grand prix. Obviously the strategy we took was slightly different to our competitors’ so it meant he had to make the overtakes on track as well.”
After Red Bull had left Verstappen out rather than pitting while leading to maintain track position during a virtual safety car, they calculated that when he rejoined behind the Ferraris they would present little hindrance. They were indeed barely a thought as Verstappen swept past to retake the lead from which he was unassailable.
“I’ve just seen a replay and I think he was waving at Charles as he passed him …” Horner noted with a broad grin that is positively infectious at the team this season. “A stunning weekend from him.”
Life in the pack behind him is altogether more trying, however. Mercedes, on a roll from their new design concept which was strong in Spain and Canada, struggled here. Hamilton in particular was enduring a torrid afternoon where he toiled home for seventh place.
The race was peppered with penalties for drivers for exceeding track limits, indeed so many, more than 1,200, that whether they identified them all and correctly applied penalties was reviewed at the stewards’ request afterwards and the results subsequently adjusted with eight drivers found to have further transgressed.
Hamilton was pinged often and early earning a 5sec penalty in race and another in the post-race review dropping him to eighth place.
Hamilton was clearly frustrated, insisting he was fighting his ride, telling the team: “I can’t keep it on the track, the car won’t turn.”
His complaints continued, a litany of insistence that everyone else was breaking track limits and requests for updates on who else was being penalised.
Indeed such was the air of frustration emanating from his cockpit that the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, was moved to intervene on the radio. “They are all going to get penalties in front of you, Lewis,” he said. “Keep going.”
Hamilton, usually as calm and calculating as Verstappen has been of late, remained vexed and continued to vent, prompting even more unusually what can only count as a telling-off from Wolff.
“The car is bad, we know,” he said. “Please drive it.” An exchange it is impossible to imagine from the time the seven-time champion stood astride the sport as its dominant force.
Were salt needed to be rubbed into this wound, the Dutchman and his team were flinging it about with abandon. With a 21sec lead at the death, he insisted on pitting for new tyres to go for the fastest lap, a risk in that something might go wrong at a stop. Yet the team are so confident they took it on and of course delivered. Verstappen with new boots took the fastest lap as well as the flag.
It was a supreme demonstration of superiority and one that has translated into points. He now leads Pérez by 81 in the championship after nine meetings and, in what will be perhaps more jarring for Mercedes, with 229 points he has individually outscored them, on 178, as a team.
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Silverstone is but days away and there is nothing to indicate Verstappen or Red Bull will be anything but on top at the old airfield. The team remain unbeaten this season. The talk of them taking a clean sweep, once somewhat fanciful, a what-if thought experiment of a never-before achieved feat, now has more than a whiff of real possibility about it.
After post-race penalty adjustments Lando Norris was a very strong fourth for McLaren, Fernando Alonso was fifth and Lance Stroll ninth for Aston Martin. Carlos Sainz sixth for Ferrari, George Russell seventh for Mercedes and Pierre Gasly 10th for Alpine.
