The Styrian Grand Prix saw Red Bull and Mercedes continue their fierce battle for the championship titles with the Anglo-Austrian squad getting the better of their Anglo-German rival on home turf.

After the nail-biting French Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen had their championship leads enhanced. The Dutchman led the Drivers’ Championship on 131 points with his main rival Lewis Hamilton sitting 12 points behind. Red Bull extended its championship lead over Mercedes to 37 points with the points tallies being 215-178. This fierce fight continued on Red Bull’s home turf yesterday.

Although it was hardly surprising to see Max Verstappen clinch the pole position on Saturday, but it caught even Mercedes by surprise that they were unable to match Red Bull’s race pace which has been the strength of their W12 so far this season. In the end, the Dutchman led from start to finish to score his 3rd win at the Red Bull Ring which ties him with Alain Prost for the most victories at Spielberg.

Although the focus has been on the battle between Mercedes and Red Bull since the beginning of the year, there was another star team yesterday. Ferrari performed a brilliant turnaround after what was looking like being a disaster following the low-key performance in the qualfying session and the first lap of the race.

The Scuderia endured a difficult French Grand Prix, and was adamant to bounce back with a stronger race pace at the Styrian Grand Prix. The qualifying session indicated that the team set up its car for the race, paying attention to the tyre management which led to the disappointment at Paul Ricard.

And that was exactly what Ferrari achieved yesterday. After clipping Pierre Gasly’s left rear and damaging his front wing, Charles Leclerc showed great race pace and determination to fight his way back up to P7, ending the 71-lap race as the Driver of the Day. His team mate Carlos Sainz showed patience in the opening stages of the race after starting from the lowly P12, but he was flying in free air, showing better race pace than Mercedes on used tyres.

Haas

“There was a bit of action at the start and I tried to keep out of it - I chose the wrong line going in to T3 as it seemed like the outside line was faster. The pace on the C2 was very strong and that’s positive - we were matching the lap times of the midfield so I think we can be happy with that. Now we need to analyse what happened and how we can do it better. Nonetheless, I think we can be happy with what we did today.”

“I think I had a very good opening lap. I was happy with my positioning as I prepared this morning where potentially there could be a bunch of cars and how to get past them. We really tried our best but there just wasn’t enough pace to fight with other teams today. I’m satisfied with myself – the balance wasn’t really there but I didn’t make any big mistakes. I think that was the maximum for today.”

Red Bull

“I am super happy to win here and doing it at home at the Red Bull Ring is always so special. I had a really enjoyable race, the car was working well and I always enjoy driving on this track. I just focused on my own race, concentrating on hitting the apexes in the places I wanted to, looking after the tyres and it worked out well. You never know how competitive or how close it’s going to be on a Sunday and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting it to be like it was today as the long run pace between the two teams was very closely matched all weekend.

„Overall, we’ve had a really positive weekend and of course it’s not going to be completely the same next week. Everyone else will also learn from this race so we will of course try and do even better and keep improving ourselves so we can stay ahead. It’s a whole Team effort so thank you very much to everyone here and back at the factory for another great win today.”

“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out today and it’s a shame to miss out on the double podium. We just needed one more lap and we could have done it, that’s all it would have taken. I think the soft tyre was slightly worse than expected this race and that hurt us towards the end of the first stint, we also had a slow stop that impacted the race as we gave the position to Bottas.

"The Team tried something different with the two-stop strategy but we got caught out by traffic, but that’s how it is sometimes and we had to try something. I’m really happy for the Team today though because Max won, he did a great job and I know we have a strong package. I look forward to next weekend where we will try again to step up on the podium together.”

Mercedes

"Today was a bit of a lonely race for me - I was trying to keep up with the Red Bull but with the speed they have, they have obviously made some big improvements over the last couple of races and it was impossible to keep up. I don't know where we are losing all the time, I think their long runs seem to be a bit better, plus on the straight it feels like we lose a lot.

„It's a serious challenge, we need to figure out what we can do to elevate the package and give us more performance but it was a really good result to get second and third. We got good points as a team today and we have just got to keep pushing."

"From where I started, I think we maximised the race - starting from fifth and finishing third was a decent result. There was not much left in my tyres at the end, today was more like rallying in Finnish Lapland than F1 in Austria! The Red Bulls seems two-tenths quicker than us each lap at the moment, which is quite a lot. Today we managed to beat one of them which was good but we need to improve the car moving forward to compete for the win.

„We need to accept that they are ahead at the moment and use it as motivation. It was a pretty clean weekend for me - other than the penalty - and P2 in qualifying and a podium finish is positive and I'm looking forward to next week."

Ferrari

"It’s a bitter sweet feeling. The incident on lap 1 put us on the back foot. It’s a shame because we lost a good opportunity to bring home an even better result. From the second lap onwards, I would rank this as one of my best races so far in Formula 1. The car felt amazing, the pace was there, and I took every opportunity to make a strong recovery.

"In terms of performance, we extracted the maximum from the car. This shows how much work has gone on behind the scenes and what an amazing job the team has done especially in the last week. We have to go over all the data to understand exactly how we achieved this step so that we can hopefully repeat it next week."

"I had a strong race and it was a good result for the team! We had good pace from the very beginning, right until the end. I managed to run a very long first stint, doing very good laps once I was able to make the most of running in free air to overcut almost the entire midfield.

"The pit stop was spot on and that gave us a chance to chase P5 as I had a lot of pace on the Hard tyre. Unfortunately it took me a lot of laps to unlap myself from Hamilton. When I was following him, the front tyres were suffering. By the time I had a clear track ahead of me again, it was too late to try and pass Norris. Tomorrow we’ll start working on the second race here. We have an opportunity to improve and we want to do all we can to get another good result."

McLaren

“The start was great, we got up to ninth, put ourselves in a really good position on the Medium tyre and the race was looking up from there, and then we lost power. We were able to fix it on the steering wheel, but everything we gained, we then lost, and we were back where we started. After that, it was difficult to make moves being in dirty air. I feel we should've been fifth and sixth again today as we were last week. We’ll reset over the next few days and come back again and make it happen next week – hopefully our luck turns.”

“A good race, quite straightforward – there wasn’t too much going on from my side, but that was also a good thing. We weren’t under too much pressure from the cars behind, and the cars in front of us were too far ahead, which we expected. We can be happy – P5 is still a very good result for us. Hopefully, we can come back and do the same again next week.”

Aston Martin

“It was a tough race today. The midfield was very close and we were in the battle for points for the majority of the race. However, we spent a lot of time in traffic and I was struggling for grip towards the end. When everyone is so closely matched, these factors can really impact your race and the final result. It is always very easy to say we should have done things differently in hindsight, but we are focused on coming back stronger next weekend. The tyres are one step softer for the Austrian Grand Prix, for example, so there is plenty of preparation work ahead in the coming days.”

“We were racing well inside the points throughout the race and it was exciting to be in a battle from the first lap until the end. We made a strong start and ran in the pack with Fernando [Alonso], Charles [Leclerc] and Pierre [Gasly]. There was a little bit of contact ahead, which helped us gain some places, and I managed to overtake Fernando to move into sixth. He was always close in the race, so it was maximum attack from there to the end.

„It was a fun battle throughout the race. We tried to hold off Carlos [Sainz] and Charles but they had strong pace in the final part of the race and a tyre advantage. So P8 is a good result and we can be happy with a positive weekend from the very first lap on Friday. We are racing here again next weekend, so we will go away and understand where we can find gains to be even stronger next weekend.”

Alpine

“It has been a challenging weekend. Today, we were in a difficult position at the start and it was always going to be hard to work our way up the field. We were just not able to follow the group in front where there were some battles and possible opportunities to take. We’re back racing in Austria again next week and we’ll try some different things to find solutions. We have some directions to take and I’m already looking forward to next weekend.”

“I don’t think we could do much more than ninth position today, but it’s good to score some more points for the team. We had a good start and fought with two or three cars on the first lap. After the first pit stop we were right behind Lance Stroll in eighth and fought with him for the rest of the race. In the end the Ferraris on fresh tyres were just too fast for us. We race here again next week, so we’ll analyse everything and try to optimise the car for the weekend.”

AlphaTauri

“Honestly, I don’t think there’s too much to say about today. I was in the middle of the straight when the incident happened, so I don’t believe there was a lot I could do. It was a great weekend up until that moment and I’m obviously extremely disappointed to not be part of the race today, as I think we had a great package to score points here. It’s extremely frustrating, as we’re in a tight fight in the constructors championship, but we still remain fifth which is really positive for the team.”

“It’s a good step up from last week and I’m happy to be finishing in the points today. I want to say thank you to the team, we’ve put in a lot of work over the last few weeks, so to be in the top 10 is really positive. I think potentially there was the opportunity to even finish in P8 or P9, but we just need to analyse everything and work hard ahead of next week. I believe this has been my most consistent weekend so far and I have to say overall I am happy. It was a real shame for Pierre today, but the pace of the car is definitely there, so we just need to put it all together next week. I’ve got some cool activities planned with AlphaTauri and Red Bull over the next few days and then we’ll start preparing for the second race here in Austria.”

Alfa Romeo

“Ten more laps and we probably could have scored a few good points, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I think we did the best we could today and achieved the best result from where we started: the strategy was right, we had good pace and the car felt good. I had a good start, some nice battles and passed a few cars in the process: in the end, it’s just the points that were missing. We will try to have a better Saturday next week and give ourselves a better chance for the race.”

“When you get spun around on the first lap and have to make your way back from last, it’s always going to be a difficult race. I had to push really hard at the beginning to catch up with the pack and this compromised us further: we tried to recover with an undercut with the hard tyres, but this left me exposed at the end of the race when I had no tyres left. Despite this, the race pace was not bad, as Kimi showed with P11. If next week we can have a good qualifying and keep out of trouble at turn one, we can hope to have a better result and bring home points.”

Williams

"Unfortunately, we had a very rare issue with the power unit that we’re still looking into. It’s such a shame as we’ve been working so hard and we were in a great position to capitalise on a strong week. I had a good start today and was managing my tyres well in P8, so everything was great up until then. Racing is cruel sometimes, but we’re all pushing together, and these things happen. I’m looking forward to going again next week."

"I got a good start and made up a position or so, but then got boxed in around the exit of turn one and was stuck on the outside. When the cars in front of me made contact, I got clipped which caused a puncture and so we had to pit on the first lap which meant I was running a lap down almost instantly. From then I got caught in a blue-flag cycle and so making any progress was difficult. We’ll go again next weekend, and hopefully have a better race."