Bottas still leads in the overall standings as both Ferarri’s retired Sunday’s race after colliding with each other on the opening lap.
SPIELBERG, Austria—July 12th—Lewis Hamilton completed a perfect weekend at the Styrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring. The defending F1 champ had the fastest practice and qualifying times on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Then, on Sunday, Hamilton drove to a comfortable victory, taking his 85th career race in the process.
Hamilton won by 13.7 seconds over Mercedes’ teammate Valterri Bottas, who passed third-place Max Verstappen laps from the finish.
Lewis Hamilton: Firstly, a big thank you to my team. The team did a fantastic job, and it was just for me to bring it home.
Hamilton took the lead at the beginning and never looked back. Hamilton led quickly by 2.4 seconds over Verstappen, increasing that lead to 5.6 by lap 24, and expanded it further to 8.1 seconds by lap 61.
It was an entirely different story for rival Ferrari. Both cars retired from the race when Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel ran into each other at the opening corner at turn one. Vettel sustained a broken rear wing, and Leclerc suffered a broken floor and a damaged front wing.
The debris from Vettel’s car was all over the track, and that brought out the only safety car of the day, which lasted only two laps before the race resumed on lap three. Another car–Renault’s Esteban Ocon–retired on lap 27 with a cooling issue.
In a tightly contested race, it wasn’t clear until the end who would finish where. Alex Albon held off Sergio Perez for fourth, while Lando Norris passed both Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo on the last turn to take fifth. Carlos Sainz Jr. and Dani Kvyat finished ninth and tenth, respectively. For the American Haas F1 Team, both Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean both improved from last week, finishing 12th and 13th.
Hamilton tried in vain to set the fastest time of the race, which would have given him an extra point. However, just as was ready to take that honor, Perez came along and topped Hamilton’s time. “I tried to get the fastest lap,” Hamilton surmised, “but I wasn’t going to get it with 40-lap-old medium tires compared to someone with fresh tires.”
After two races, Bottas leads Hamilton by six points in the overall standings. Norris is in third.
After consecutive races in Austria, round three of F1 2020 will take place next weekend in Budapest, Hungary.
