Valtteri Bottas claims Austria GP win as Lewis Hamilton bumped off podium for collision with Alexander Albon
Valtteri Bottas kept his head amid the drama to seal victory in Austria as a madcap 71-lap dash made clear Lewis Hamilton’s bid to equal Michael Schumacher’s championship record will be no procession.
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The new Formula One season will exist in a diminished form, with fewer races on the calendar and no spectators for the time being, but there was enough drama in the opening Grand Prix in Austria on Sunday to fill a season’s worth of highlights reels.
In a madcap 71-lap dash amid the Styrian Alps, it became clear that Lewis Hamilton’s quest to win a landmark seventh world title, which would take him level with Michael Schumacher’s record, will not be the procession that many had expected.
There will be obstacles thrown in his path, with rival teams doing all they can to unsettle him.
The three-place grid penalty Hamilton was given shortly before the start, relegating him from second place on the grid to fifth, came after an appeal from Red Bull. The five-second penalty that then cost Hamilton a place on the podium came after he had been audaciously attacked late in the race by Alex Albon, of Red Bull, who was shunted off the track as the drivers went wheel to wheel.
There is also a fiercely focused Mercedes team-mate in Valtteri Bottas, who kept a clear head at altitude when so many others around him were losing theirs. After starting in pole position, Bottas managed to stay out in front for the whole race, undoubtedly the safest place to be, as chaotic scenes unfolded behind him.
Only 11 of the 20 drivers who crossed the start line were able to complete the race, with multiple mechanical failures, a series of collisions that required three interventions from the safety car and, on the 55th lap, a tyre detaching itself from Kimi Raikkonen’s car and bouncing wildly across the track towards the barriers like a runaway kangaroo.
At that point, it was tempting to wonder whether spectators had been kept away from the Red Bull Ring to prevent injuries from flying parts, rather than the requirement for a biosecure venue during the coronavirus pandemic. After a three-and-a-half month delay to the start of the season, this was the Formula One race when the wheels really did come off.
Even Bottas had his issues, enduring debilitating problems with his gearbox sensors that affected both him and Hamilton, driving the Mercedes cars bedecked in their new black livery. But Bottas held his nerve, shrewdly varying his restarts after the safety car had repeatedly brought the field back together. “I dodged many bullets today,” Bottas said afterwards, with relief.
Hamilton, for his part, crossed the line in second place behind Bottas, but was then edged out of the podium places when he was penalised for colliding with Albon as the Red Bull driver attempted to overtake him on the fourth turn on lap 61.
These two drivers have recent history, having clashed during the penultimate race of last season in Brazil, after which Hamilton conceded he was at fault, and Albon once again felt wronged on Sunday.
The latest incident came at a point in the race when Mercedes were attempting to rein in both their drivers to protect the car, giving explicit instructions for them to stay away from the lumpy kerbs on a track described by one team principal as a “car-biter”.
Based on Hamilton's reaction, he's not at fault for the incident with Albon. #F1 | #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/rNdZnXsvY4
— JJ (@TomcatNASCAR_2) July 5, 2020
For both Bottas and Hamilton, vibrations from mounting the kerbs repeatedly had begun to play havoc with the Mercedes’ gearbox sensors and Albon, chasing a first podium finish in his second season in F1, sensed an opportunity shortly after the safety car had left the track for the final time.
With superior grip on his tyres, Albon went into the right-handed turn and spotted space to attack outside Hamilton. He appeared to have edged in front, but Hamilton defended his position, his front left tyre making contact with the Red Bull’s rear right wheel, forcing Albon to spin off the track. From moving into a position in which he would have been a contender to win the race, he would be retiring shortly afterwards.
“There’s always a risk overtaking on the outside, but I gave him as much space as I could,” Albon said.
“I knew as long as I gave him all the space I could, it’s up to him if he wants to crash or not.”
Hamilton felt that the collision had simply been a “racing incident” and that he had given Albon sufficient space. With the teams staying in Austria for another week before the second race at the circuit next Sunday, relations between the Red Bull and Mercedes teams are now distinctly frosty. Just as well, perhaps, that the teams are required to remain in their own social bubbles and not to fraternise with each other.
The main threat from Red Bull had been expected to come through Max Verstappen, the winner of the Austrian Grand Prix in the previous two years, who was promoted to second on the grid behind Bottas after Hamilton’s first penalty of the day. Verstappen, though, was unable to take advantage, forced to retire with mechanical problems on the 14th lap.
It had appeared, on Saturday evening, as though Hamilton had escaped punishment for failing to slow down when yellow flags were shown during qualifying. But before Sunday’s race, Red Bull drew the stewards’ attention to footage from Hamilton’s onboard camera that showed a yellow light clearly in his line of vision. As a result, he was moved back from second on the grid to fifth.
Nor was this the first time that Red Bull had attempted to put a spoke in their rivals’ wheels in Austria, having previously lodged a protest about the new dual axis steering system that Mercedes have introduced this season.
On that occasion, the complaint was not upheld and the new system was judged to be legal, but the battle lines had been drawn.
While the leading teams were taking chunks out of each other, Hamilton’s demotion for his clash with Albon created an unexpected chance late in the race for Lando Norris, the 20-year-old British driver. Seizing the moment, Norris drove the fastest lap of the race on the final lap to claim the first podium finish of his career, sparking jubilant scenes in the McLaren garage.
There was jubilation for Bottas, too, who won the opening race for the second consecutive season. Only two more victories followed last year as he finished a distant second to Hamilton in the drivers’ championship, but he has edged out in front now and, in a truncated season, with only eight races confirmed in the calendar, a few early victories could make the leader difficult to catch.
THE TIMES, LONDON
Originally published as Valtteri Bottas claims Austria GP win as Lewis Hamilton bumped off podium for collision with Alexander Albon