Race Report: Tough Weekend for the Team in Spielberg

A disappointing Austrian Grand Prix saw George Russell come home in P5 with Kimi Antonelli an opening lap retirement.

The hottest day of the weekend greeted all the teams with a track temperature above 50°C throughout.

George and Kimi started P5 and P9 respectively, both on the Medium compound, but Kimi’s race wouldn’t get past turn three.

The Italian locked his rear tyres in order to avoid cars ahead and was unable to avoid hitting the Red Bull Racing car of Max Verstappen; both drivers retired on the spot.

After a Safety Car restart, George battled the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton for P4 but was unable to make the pass stick.

After that, it was a lonely race for the Brit with a traditional Medium-Medium-Hard two-stop seeing him maximise the pace of the car to take P5.

After the race, Kimi was handed a three-place grid drop for his role in the opening lap incident. He will serve that at next weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Kimi Antonelli

I am very disappointed with how today played out. After the lights went out, I was just trying to maintain my starting position but made a mistake coming into Turn Three and that cost me a lot. I did not brake too late but after trying to avoid Liam (Lawson) I locked the rear brakes. I then locked the front brakes too and could not avoid the crash with Max (Verstappen).

We didn’t get to see how our race would have played out so apologies to the team. I also want to say sorry to Max for ruining his race too. This was a big mistake, and I know we could have fought for a good result without it. Thankfully, we’ve got a race straight away next weekend, so our full focus is already on Silverstone.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

It is a shame that Kimi’s race got cut short at Turn Three. He locked the rear axle going into the corner, tried to avoid the cars ahead but unfortunately locked the front brakes too and ran into Max (Verstappen). This unfortunately marked the end of his race in Austria.

On the other side of the garage, George struggled a lot with his tyre degradation. The conditions were much warmer than what we had in Free Practice and managing his tyres carefully was the only choice he was left with. The high temperatures here just showed where our weakness is again, and we will work really hard to solve this for the upcoming races.

After struggling this much in hot races, we now have a better understanding of where we stand and what needs to be done to perform better. The next few days will see intense work from the team and hopefully we will be able to fight for a podium in Silverstone.