Tyres, tyres, tyres
Before even setting foot in Austria, we had a wave of driver changes to deal with…
Boccolacci was dropped from Campos, as his contract ran out after France and a sponsor blocked him from re-signing. He was replaced by Indian driver Arjun Maini who has all kinds of GP3, F2 and F1 links.
Raghunathan got banned from the Austrian weekend for having too many penalty points on his licence, so his stand in was Mexican Red Bull junior Patricio O’Ward who has been racing in the US.
Finally, Boschung actually ran out of money this time around and so was replaced at Trident by American driver Ryan Tveter, who previously did GP3 for a couple of years.
Practice: Who needs tyres that actually last?
Tyres promised to be a big thing over the weekend as Pirelli had apparently chosen two compounds that wouldn’t last any amount of laps, especially in the apocalyptic heat wave that has been the European summer this year. The drivers were clearly excited about this prospect, with the words “tough, challenging and interesting” being banded around.
At the end of practice everyone’s tyres did indeed look terrible and there was only a tenth of a second separating the top three: Delétraz, De Vries and Ghiotto.
Qualifying: Rise of the rookies
With only one push lap on each set of tyres before they died, the pressure was on for qualifying. Showing their experience, De Vries and Latifi were the early pace setters. However, as everyone went back to the pits to prepare for their second (and final) runs, Hubert decided to take advantage of the clear track and run in The Gap, taking second place in the process. All he could do then was sit on the pitwall and watch every other driver try to take on his time. He looked a bit nervous and Arden said they expected him to be in the “top six or eight.”
Two minutes to go and to everyone’s surprise Hubert’s second place, behind De Vries, was still in tact and it stayed that way to the end, while Zhou pulled out an impressive lap for third place.
In the press conference, Zhou (hatless and showing his hair in its full glory) was asked if he’s fighting for top rookie, “I’m not fighting the rookie championship, I’m looking at the real championship.” Burn.
Meanwhile De Vries gave away that he hadn’t watched the F1 practice, so Hubert and Zhou filled him in. In detail. Full marks to the Renault juniors. Must try harder next time Nyck de Vries.
Feature Race: Will they even make it through the formation lap?
The heat, the tyres, Davide Valsecchi co-commentating. A recipe for massive excitement. Surely.
Schumacher, in seventh, stalled on the grid at the start of the formation lap, “Nothing works”. Tveter spun at the end of the formation lap, but he managed to pull it together in time to get to his grid slot and was at the back anyway so maybe no one noticed…
There was also a distinct lack of tyre warming happening on the formation lap, as everyone was so fearful of them falling apart.
At the start, De Vries managed to hold his lead, in fact they all pretty much kept the same positions, apart from Aitken who went off the road.
Zhou attempted to overtake Hubert for second, but in that moment he lost it all, losing several places before recovering himself. That went badly. Matsushita passed Hubert instead. That left De Vries in the lead, with Matsushita second, Hubert third and Zhou in fourth. Zhou did soon manage to make it past Hubert, however, in a synchronised overtaking move at exactly the same time that Ghiotto overtook Latifi for fifth, before he went on to also overtake Hubert for fourth. De Vries meanwhile just headed off down the road.
Just in case it wasn’t going bad enough for Latifi, he then got spun off the road by his team mate Sette Câmara, “Sérgio hit me!” Happy birthday Nicholas! Latifi ended up in 16th, while Sette Câmara got a five-second time penalty.
Lap seven and everyone was in the pits, except Ghiotto who couldn’t pit because his team mate Zhou was already occupying the pit box.
Hubert managed to jump back ahead of Zhou during their pitstops. Good work Arden, but then Ghiotto, having taken his pit stop a lap later, came out ahead of both of them. Ghiotto had to do a bit of defending, which was no problem for him, even on cold tyres. But then suddenly Zhou had a gear box glitch and dropped all the way to 15th before picking up speed again. Stressful.
Not on these tyres bro
After the first round of pitstops it was disappointing to see that no one’s tyres dropped off a cliff, as was promised, even Ghiotto’s remained intact on his extra lap. Another disappointment (for me) was Delétraz getting a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane.
The next potential tyre victims were those on the alternative strategy, trying to make their tyres last forever and do a quick pit stop at the end. Mazepin, now in second place, desperately enquired, “How many more laps on this tyre? That’s all I need to know!” Just 20 laps… oh. Gelael, ahead of Mazepin, was told to push in sector two, “Not on these tyres bro” (at least I hope he said bro, that’s what I’m choosing to have heard). All those on the alternative strategy just sounded like they were having a lovely time, although Mazepin did manage to overtake Gelael for the pretend lead of the race.
Eventually everyone just overtook all those on the alternative strategy and Gelael had to pit with 15 laps to go, seemingly because he had to and not because that was the optimum strategy. How was he supposed to drag an even softer set of tyres round for another 15 laps? To add insult to injury, it was also a terrible stop.
With ten laps to go, De Vries’s tyres were looking pretty bad, while Matsushita and Ghiotto behind him were looking pretty good. Carlin reckoned De Vries was deliberately going slowly, being super cautious and clever with his tyre management, but no else thought that, and Matsushita proved it by catching De Vries and easily breezing past him with DRS. Ghiotto did the same. Even Hubert started closing in on De Vries.
Behind Hubert, Sette Câmara was charging, while also telling his engineer off for being too energetic over the radio.
At the end of the race, there were so many time penalties to apply it was basically impossible to tell who finished where, but it was Matsushita who won, with Ghiotto second and De Vries third (although he finished fourth on the track behind Sette Câmara who overtook him on the last lap, but couldn’t pull out the five seconds needed to negate his penalty).
There was much happy screaming from Matsushita. Ghiotto looked unusually relieved, probably because he had actually scored some points for the first time in forever. De Vries looked composed as ever, even after losing everything in the closing laps, although he almost lost said composure for a moment when getting weighed, with many questions for the scales man and checking of his work.
Important to note was that O’Ward came last and will now clearly be dropped by Red Bull’s young driver programme. They don’t tolerate such things.
Even more penalties
As if there could be more penalties, Maini was disqualified because he had his rear tyres fitted the wrong way round at the start of the race. Excellent work Campos.
Sprint Race: The rise of Schumacher
King was on pole for the Sprint Race, with Delétraz in second and Zhou third. Importantly, 12th-placed Mazepin had a spider on him and needed someone to come and help.
Calderón stalled on the formation lap. It’s in vogue.
Delétraz made a good start, but King stayed ahead. Sette Câmara was looking racy, and Zhou went off the road.
De Vries, now in third, was flying, passing both Delétraz and King in a just a few laps. Did he learn nothing about tyre management in the Feature Race? But that didn’t even matter, because his pit limiter suddenly came on and he slowed, dropping down to sixth. At that moment everyone dived for the lead at once, four cars all fighting it out. Delétraz came out on top, with King losing out in second, Sette Câmara third and Zhou in fourth.
In the next few laps, Alesi and Ilott had contact, resulting in a puncture and retirement for Alesi, Sette Câmara and Zhou both passed King, and Schumacher was clearly loving life having gone from 18th to 9th in just eight laps.
Hubert and Aitken had a bit of a tussle, with Hubert barging past Aitken and Aitken ramming into the back of Hubert and breaking his own front wing. “Sorry guys;” sad Jack voice as he headed to the pits to fix the damage, while Schumacher took yet another overtaking opportunity and went by Hubert.
Next down the road for Schumacher to overtake was Jordan “the tyres are dead” King, which says it all about what happened next. Behind them Latifi also now passed Hubert, as did Correa and Matsushita. Hubert literally having the opposite of Schumacher’s race, possibly caused by his slightly damaged front wing, after the Aitken incident. Up front, Ghiotto passed team mate Zhou for third place.
Then suddenly, Delétraz was in the wall! A huge smash, “No brakes! No brakes guys!” Terrifying. He was thankfully okay though. Safety car deployed.
Once the safety car was in, Sette Câmara made a good restart and kept his lead. Now with the field bunched up, it wasn’t long before De Vries overtook third-placed Zhou and Schumacher swiftly followed suit, before he started having a go at De Vries as well. From 18th to 3rd!? What a story that would be, the whole world willed him on. I’ve never been so excited for a Schumacher before. De Vries defended hard, not knowing what magic he was spoiling.
Sette Câmara won for the first time since 2017, I for one am happy I won’t have to listen to that stat again, I’m sure he is too. Ghiotto was second, and, disappointingly for the world, De Vries was third.
All so deserving
After some excellent motorsport royalty presenting trophies on the Feature Race podium I didn’t think it could be beaten, but Patrick Dempsey was presenting the Sprint Race trophies. Motorsport and TV royalty. Too cool Austria.
Sette Câmara used his podium time to apologise for his indiscretions the previous day (you know, just that little thing where he ran his team mate off the track).
In the press conference, Ghiotto said De Vries deserved to be in his place, while yesterday De Vries said Sette Câmara deserved to be in his place. Sette Câmara said De Vries was doing a great job. All so lovely. It warms my heart.
There was also lots of food for thought. De Vries provided us with some life advice, “You either give up, or you keep your shit together.” Excellent. I might get it tattooed. While Sette Câmara set an essay question on whether it is better to run in free air, or to be behind but with the benefit of DRS. I expect submissions by the end of next week.
Penalties!
Hubert, not having suffered enough, was given a five-second time penalty for the incident between him and Aitken, but then Aitken was given a five-second time penalty for the second part of the incident between him and Hubert. That put Hubert in 17th place (instead of 16th) and Aitken a bit more last.
Championship points
De Vries now has a quite comfortable lead with 152 points over Latifi’s 115. Sette Câmara is third with 107, Ghiotto has climbed his way back up to fourth with 97, while Aitken and Zhou are just behind with 86 and 85 points respectively.