2023 Austrian GP: Post Race Analysis
A fun race to watch. Plenty of passing, different tire strategies, a VSC that shook things up, and plenty of penalties up and down the grid. Rightfully so! Every single driver is 100% capable of staying within the white lines, rules shouldn't not become more lenient. In fact, the stewards should have been more strict, as there were plenty of track limits that got missed or ignored. As I write this, I see some post race penalties got applied.
Red Bull really dominate at their home track. Verstappen drove hard for about 5 laps the entire race and then was in complete control. Perez a good recovery, but is it all that impressive with that car's race pace and 3 DRS zones?
Ferrari appear to have figured out their massive updates, surely helped by the several small upgrades brought for this race. Leclerc had the pace in quali, looked good in the race as well. Sainz looked very strong in the race, though it's hard to say if he was really as fast as Leclerc, or perhaps even faster since DRS helps tremendously at this track. Ferrari did the right thing by not swapping drivers early, they made the right call to pit (at least one car) under the VSC on their 2nd lap, sadly just missing pit entry on the 1st lap. However they borked the pitstops. 4+ seconds for Leclerc, which further hurt Carlos who also had a 4+ second stop. In hindsight keeping one of the drivers out likely would have been worth trying, but they got caught out with some bad luck and some mistakes during the VSC that could not be foreseen. Still a very good result for the team.
McLaren's new update seems to be extremely impressive. Will need to observe next race in Silverstone to know if it wasn't just a one off deal. Lando loves Austria and he provided another stunning drive. Appeared to get away with track limits on a couple of occasions. Piastri had a rough race. Got caught up in a traffic jam that damaged his front wing, and was driving the old spec slower car.
Aston Martin is another team that doesn't seem to have a handle on their monster update they recently brought. A car that has battled for podiums all year looked genuinely off pace the whole weekend. Debatable if they should have kept Alonso out on Hard's during the VSC, but pitting under VSC does cut a lot of time out of the pitstop. The mistake was not pitting Alonso immediately when the VSC came out. Stroll... well he did get a point.
Mercedes didn't look great around Austria. Thoughts are the car remains to be a high drag car. With 3 straights at 300 kph, it can be quite costly. Hamilton had the advantage over Russell once again, though plenty of track limits for him. Lots of complaining on the radio, which should be expected since Lando complained relentlessly and LH was given a penalty.
Alpine had some decent pace, especially with Gasly. Unfortunately for them, they are only the 5th best team on a good day. Now McLaren might have a package that drops them to 6th. This makes points tough. Ocon apparently has 30 seconds of time penalties for track limits. Ouch.
Williams typically runs quite well around Austria. Albon had moments of looking good, but just couldn't hold off all the attacks with the 3 DRS zones. Logan had perhaps his best race which is good for him.
Alfa Romeo needs to bring some updates quick. One of, if not the slowest cars at this point. The drivers did a good job for the package they had to work with. Bottas was having a decent drive, right in the mix of battles, fighting for the last point. Then in the last 3rd of the race somehow dropped down to 16th, once again being beat by his young teammate.
AlphaTauri also need some updates, but also some better drivers. Yuki has improved a lot as an F1 driver, but is still far from being a great driver. De Vries is the biggest let out and can't seem to perform at all. At least he beat his teammate today.
Haas. What the hell? Great quali, the car had some okay pace. Perhaps even enough pace to get a point or two. In the end, 19th and 20th. What a missed opportunity. Better call Gene.
Driver of the Day: Lando Norris. Car is much better with the update, but it's still nowhere near a top 3 team. Norris is just a stud around the Red Bull Ring.
