The 11th round of the Formula One season is a sprint weekend, for the third time this year, with a 100km race at Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring on Saturday before the main event on Sunday. Red Bull’s triple world champion, cheered on by his orange army of travelling fans, will hope to stretch the 69-point lead he enjoys over closest challenger Norris in the papaya-liveried McLaren.
Norris has a point to make after taking pole in Spain last Sunday and finishing second. He was also runner-up in Canada — both races the 24-year-old felt he should have won.
Spielberg is the shortest lap, in terms of time, on the calendar with Verstappen taking pole last year in just over 64 seconds.
“On such a short lap it’s going to be so tight,” said Red Bull principal Christian Horner.
“We expect Mclaren and Lando to be fast again. Ferrari, Mercedes, who knows? If you look at the gap to those guys after the (Spanish) race it was pretty similar to last year. The one who’s stepped up is Lando.
“We’re having to fight really hard for the wins at the moment and we’re having to be on the top of our game as a team …, that’s Formula One, that’s as it should be.” Winner in Miami in May, Norris was also runner-up in Imola and China while last year’s Austrian race won by Verstappen, for the fourth time in six years, was where McLaren brought breakthrough upgrades.
The Briton has now finished second 10 times in 23 races. He was 2.2 seconds behind Verstappen in Barcelona and 3.8 adrift in Canada. The gap at Imola was 0.7 and he beat the Dutch driver by 7.6 in Miami.
Austria, and then Silverstone, are favourite circuits where he has gone well in the past.
“We’re on a good roll. We’re doing well … I need to just tidy up a few little bits and we’ll be on top,” he said in Spain.
“I’m confident. Every weekend we go into now, the car’s performing extremely well. We’re always there or thereabouts within a couple of tenths of pole.”
Verstappen and Norris’s team mates, Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri, will be hoping to get in on the act after disappointing results in Spain — the Mexican only eighth and Australian seventh.
Mercedes and Ferrari should be in the mix, with seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton taking his first podium of the season with Mercedes in Spain and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz holding the race lap record at the Red Bull Ring, albeit from 2020.
“It is a very different circuit to last weekend,” cautioned Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
“There is plenty of low to mid-speed content, punctuated by some longer straights. That will provide another challenge and reference point for our car.”
The chaos of last year, with the results revised five hours after the finish following a flurry of penalties to nearly half the field for exceeding track limits, should no longer be a concern with a strip of gravel added to turns nine and 10.
Formula One statistics for Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix at Spielberg, the 11th round of the 24-race championship and third sprint race of the season:
Lap distance: 4.318km. Total distance: 306.452km (71 laps)
2023 pole position: Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Red Bull one minute 04.391 seconds
2023 sprint winner: Verstappen
2023 race winner: Verstappen
Race lap record: Carlos Sainz (Spain) Ferrari 1:05.619, 2020
Start time: 1300 GMT (1500 local).
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