Verstappen tears his team apart, Mercedes laughs at its own "stupidity"
At the Grand Prix of Austria, Mercedes secured their first win in ages - but threatened it with their own "stupidity." At Red Bull, Max Verstappen criticized himself and his team.
Norris is under stress - not just because of Verstappen: Max Verstappen received a penalty, but a cause for the escalation of this duel can also be found with Lando Norris - and that's in the younger past. The chance for victory was presented to the McLaren driver race after race, but it kept slipping through his fingers. "How can I be so stupid?", he asked publicly in the end. So, one went into the Austrian Grand Prix to prove it to himself and the world, and so his attacks looked like that.
It was an escalation with a warning. In the end, Verstappen held him off against the rules, but Norris needed an experience of success - to show that he can really take on the world champion, not just in theory.
Red Bull couldn't always fend off: The home race of the series champions showed two things. On the one hand, Red Bull is far from being written off; the pace was impressive after many shaky weeks. On the other hand, the team and Max Verstappen are not infallible. "We were bad, made many mistakes, the second stop was a complete mess," said the Dutchman.
And he himself had a part in Norris' catch-up. A bad blocking driver after the last pit stop, where a wheel jammed, brought the pursuer even closer. The empire is still strong, but it didn't hold off in Austria - because it still offers attack surfaces.
"Stupidity" threatens Mercedes' triumph: The greatest danger for the first win of the year was ultimately Mercedes' own motorsport boss. "We can win this!", Toto Wolff shouted into George Russell's ear via radio as he was hurtling towards a hard braking zone at 320 km/h. "I almost crashed," complained Russell, but in the end they could all laugh about it. For the "dumbest thing I've done in twelve years at Mercedes," Wolff would "forever be ashamed," he said later: "You can't turn them off in such situations."
The emotions have passed, it had been a long time: Mercedes last won a race in November 2022. At least things were going up again, the Silver Arrows were third strongest again. "We still need two cars that get in the car to win a race," gives Wolff. At least a start has been made.
Hülkenberg drives powerfully to the small victory: For a midfield team, a position in the top 6 is like a victory - Nico Hülkenberg was the living proof on Sunday. The last lap on the way to sixth place was driven "with 200 beats per minute," said the Rhineland native, "that really made me happy." The Haas cars came out of a weak qualifying session impressively in the race, and Kevin Magnussen finished as the eighth best.
"Twelve points for us, that's huge, a good gulp from the pool," said Hülkenberg, and so it is: For twelve points, teams like Haas normally have to work for months, the reward is now a big leap in the WM ranking. Haas is now in seventh place among the ten teams - at the end of the season, every step in this table is worth millions.
Despite his criticism, Max Verstappen's performance at the Austrian Grand Prix demonstrated that Red Bull is still a formidable force in Formula 1, challenging even the dominant Mercedes AMG team. Despite securing their first win in ages, Mercedes' triumph was almost threatened by an instance of "stupidity" from their motorsport boss, Toto Wolff.
