Max Verstappen had a seemingly easy afternoon near Spielberg as he lead the Styrian Grand Prix from start to finish, never even having to worry about a challenge from behind. Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas saved the day for Mercedes by completing the podium.
In the first stint Verstappen was almost as fast on the hard tyres as Lewis on the softs. Pace looking good from Red Bull, and they usually improve a lot till Saturday.
In the first stint Verstappen was almost as fast on the hard tyres as Lewis on the softs. Pace looking good from Red Bull, and they usually improve a lot till Saturday.
Well, the hard is most often a better race tyre than the soft, so it’s not that strange. Lewis kept a really strong and consistent pace on the softs, so it’s very likely he will do the same on harder tyres.
Still have high hopes for rain though, it’s about time we have a proper rain race!
I'm going to redo the long runs for Lewis and Max, as he left two of Maxes deleted laps in, took Lewis out, and completely missed one of Lewis valid laps.
Last edited by dans79 on 25 Jun 2021, 18:10, edited 1 time in total.
hamilton's deleted lap vs verstappen's "P1" lap from fp2:
Basically equal on straights, maybe honda has 2-3 kmh on the very top end, but not on acceleration. Hamilton took it very slow on the start of the lap, that's why his initial speed on start finish line is a bit lower, but it's more or less the same from then on.
Hamilton gains time in in T6 and T7 left handers. Verstappen is a tiny bit compromised by the car mid corner but doesn't lose too much, around 1 tenth trough that T6-7-8 complex (come to think that's quite significant with such tight margins). I'd say hamilton did gain time by going over track limits. Not enough to lose P1 but probably like half a tenth.
Hamilton did his fastest time on his 3rd or 4th lap, with much less fuel onboard, showing the Mercs still have the tyre warmup issue. Max's fastest lap was bang on his first flier. Not comparable.
The long runs seems to suggest what I’m hoping, which is that Ferrari’s poor pace thus far is due to trying to focus on tyre issues. They look actually really good on the soft - even compared to Perez - on the soft tyre runs, so with any luck they’ve found a race setup that works ok (even if it does sacrifice some quali speed).