Ferrari completes sensational tyre changes at the Austrian Grand Prix
Although Ferrari seemingly lacked pace at the Red Bull Ring, the Scuderia completed the two fastest tyre changes of the Austrian Grand Prix with the quickest having only taken 1.95s. F1Technical's lead journalist Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis.
The Spielberg round has been a very difficult race weekend for the Scuderia. The team brought a comprehensive set of upgrades to the Spanish Grand Prix, but the upgraded SF-24 has not delivered the results the team had hoped for.
This trend continued at the Red Bull Ring with Ferrari having dropped down to fourth place in the pecking order as it was unable to keep up with Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes neither in qualifying trim or in race trim.
However, the Italian outfit put in a brilliant performance in the pit lane, having delivered the two quickest tyre services of the entire race. The Italian squad serviced Charles Leclerc's car during his second stop under two seconds (1.95s). The second-quickest stop also belonged to Ferrari (2.07s).
The first segment of Saturday's qualifying was the closest Q1 in the history of Formula One with the gap having been 0.798s between first and last driver. Similarly closely-matched was the battle for the quickest stop behind Ferrari.
Red Bull and McLaren have both completed a 2.10-second tyre stop while Alpine delivered two 2.20-second tyre service.RB perfromed a quick tyre change which took only 2.25s while Mercedes' quickest stop required just 2.31s.
Despite Red Bull's quickest pit stop, Max Verstappen's tyre services were far from perfect. The Dutchman elected to complete the Austrian Grand Prix with a two-stop strategy.
He bolted on a set of hard tires on Lap 23, and this first pit stop was unusually long for the fastest crew in Formula 1 at 2.73 seconds but was nothing compared to the scenes that followed later during the second stop.
The normally lightning-fast Red Bull mechanics made a complete mess of the stop which took 6.59 seconds after the wheel nut on the RB20’s rear left wheel refused to budge. To make matters worse, Verstappen then locked up on his out lap.
As a result, Lando Norris was able to draw within 1.5 seconds of him after a more normal, 2.90 second stop. An epic battle for the lead ensued with Norris making repeated attempts to try to get ahead with hard braking maneuvers. Verstappen reported a lack of grip while Norris had problems sticking to track limits, for which he later received a 5-second penalty.
And then came the inevitable. On Lap 64, in Turn 3 on the approach to Schönberg straight, Verstappen and Norris made contact, slashing open tires on both cars. Norris had to park up his McLaren while Verstappen limped to the pits to switch to softs, his stop taking 3.04 seconds this time around. He then finished the home race of his Austro-British team in P5.
"We made a complete mess of everything today. It all went wrong," said Max Verstappen, openly laying the blame at Red Bull's door.
Apart from the stop that took too long, the timing of the tire change later in the race was also a problem for him, because he got stuck in backmarker traffic. "As I see it, it all began to unravel with strategy, and then came the pit stops which were an absolute disaster. We gave away lap time to the opposition for free - six seconds in the course of two stops! And then you’re back, racing again," noted the championship runaway leader.
