July 1, 2023, 12:58 PM
July 1, 2023, 12:58 PM
The Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull) won the second sprint race of the Formula 1 season with authority ahead of his teammate, the Mexican Sergio Pérez, this Saturday in Austria, before the Grand Prix, scheduled for Sunday in Spielberg.
Verstappen, current double world champion and outstanding leader of the current season, and ‘Checo’ Pérez thus sealed Red Bull’s dominance in his Austrian home.
The Spanish Carlos Sainz Jr (Ferrari) completed the podium. in this race of about half an hour. The Aston Martins of Canadian Lance Stroll and Spanish veteran Fernando Alonso were fourth and fifth, respectively.
Pérez first managed to overtake Verstappen in the first corner. Overtaken by his right on the following stretch, the Mexican put pressure on his teammate and led him towards the grass, but ‘Mad Max’ then responded by braking very late and then blocking him, to finish first.
“But what is this?” Verstappen got angry in a radio message about the Pérez maneuver, in a dialogue with his engineer. ‘Checo’ was also surprised by what happened in another message: “What doesn’t work with Max?”
After the race, with somewhat calmer spiritss, Verstappen noted that “the exit from the first corner” had not been “nice”.
“We could have had a big accident. We have to talk about it, it was not right,” he added.
Pérez tried to reduce the intensity of what happened: “Max was angry (…) but everything is fine. We just talked. Although we were 1 and 2, the visibility was very bad.”
Verstappen escaped after the small friction with his partner and finished with more than twenty seconds of advantage, in a race of just 24 laps on a short circuit (4,318 km).
Twice winner at the start of the season, in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan (double there in the sprint and the Grand Prix), Pérez seemed to be the only one capable of standing up to Verstappen, but the reality is very different: the Dutchman won the another six Grand Prix and he has a seventy-point advantage, a huge cushion.
It is the second time this year, after Baku, that a sprint race has been held on the Saturday before the Grand Prix on Sunday. In total there are six sprint races scheduled for 2023 and they award points for the top eight (8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1).
Nico Hulkenberg (Haas), Esteban Ocon (Alpine) and George Russell (Mercedes) they were sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively, ending up in the scoring zone. The British Lando Norris (McLaren), ninth, and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), tenth, could not score.
Unlike last season, the starting grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix is not defined by the results of the sprint race, but by Friday’s qualifying session.
Verstappen achieved the 26th pole position of his career on Friday, the sixth of this season and the fourth in a row. He will start Sunday’s race just ahead of Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari).
Leclerc, winner last year at Spielberg, he was the disappointment of Saturday’s sprint race, finishing in twelfth place.
“I’m in trouble,” acknowledged the Monegasque. “I have a lot of problems driving the car, I don’t have a lot of confidence,” he said.
The Red Bull Ring is, as its name suggests, one of the strongholds for Verstappen, who before this weekend had already won there four times, three in Austrian Grand Prix and one in a Styrian Grand Prix.
