SPIELBERG, Austria — Though he didn’t start on pole, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc managed to top Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to win Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring.
With dueling strategies, Leclerc’s two pit stops occurred later on in each stint compared to Verstappen, allowing the Ferrari driver to gap the reigning world champion by 1.5 seconds.
Though it wasn’t smooth sailing for the Ferrari driver. Leclerc reported to the team that his throttle was stuck, which allowed Verstappen to close during the latter stages of the race.
“It was a really good race,” Leclerc said. “The pace was there, at the beginning, we had some good fights with Max (Verstappen) and the end was incredibly difficult. I had this problem with the throttle and it would get stuck at 20 or 30 percent throttle in the low speed, so it was very tricky but we managed to make it stick until the end and I’m so, so happy.
“I definitely needed that one. I mean, the last five races have been incredibly difficult for myself but also for the team, obviously, and to finally show that we’ve got the pace in the car and that we can do it is incredible, so we need to push until the end.”
Leclerc’s third victory of the season allowed him to jump Red Bull’s Sergio Perez to second in points, 38 markers behind Verstappen.
“We were just a bit too slow today, we were doing the best we could with the strategy but the Ferraris were extremely fast,” Verstappen said. “Of course, we need to understand why we had so much degradation with the tires, I’m not sure exactly what happened, no matter which compound we used none of them seemed to work well. Although we didn’t win today, we still walked away with a lot of points. In difficult moments you need to score points and we did that today. It was incredible to receive the support I did from the fans this weekend, but I’ve been hearing a few shocking things. It’s clearly wrong and what’s been happening is not right at all – I shouldn’t need to say this on a weekend that should be a celebration of Formula One at our home race.”
Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton notched his fourth podium of the season (and third in a row), after inheriting third place from Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who suffered an engine failure.
“First, I want to say a big thank you to the women and men in the garage who worked so hard to rebuild the car,” Hamilton said. “I needed a brand-new car on Saturday morning, unfortunately. That’s something I don’t do often, but I’m just thankful for how hard everybody worked. It was tough in the Sprint yesterday, but today felt better. We had decent pace at different points of the race, even if I was racing a little bit in no-man’s land. It’s been a bit of a rough weekend for the team – but I’m grateful we got third and fourth today. That’s great points, and we have improved the car. Now we need to keep chipping away to get back to the front.”
George Russell finished fourth in the second Mercedes, with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon rounding out the top five.
In what was his best career result, Haas F1’s Mick Schumacher finished sixth. Schumacher’s teammate Kevin Magnussen gave the team a double points day in 8th.