gravel bed
Oh yes, if it takes longer again… Waiting for hours for the official result has meanwhile become a kind of unique selling point of Formula 1 in competition with all other sports. A Unique selling point, that sounds a lot better! On Sunday in Spielberg there was certainty at 9.46 p.m., and only then was the order of the ranking decided. But this time, at least, it cannot be said that the race control did not make good use of the more than five hours since crossing the finish line. During this time she allegedly looked through an incredible 1200 (!) scenes on video afterwards to check whether there weren’t even more criminals on four wheels off the track than had been noticed during the race. Article 33.3 states: “Riders must make every reasonable effort to use the track at all times and must not leave the track without good reason.”
The inspection, which was prompted by a protest by the Aston Martin team, revealed that a whole series of drivers had no good reason for excessive excursions in the curves: the race control recorded 83 violations of the white lines in the end. She pronounced twelve (!) additional penalties for eight (!!) drivers. In addition to the violations already punished in the race by Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, Kevin Magnussen, Pierre Gasly, Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant, there was also: five more seconds for Tsunoda. Sainz, Gasly, Hamilton, Albon, Sargeant another ten seconds. Nick De Vries 15 seconds and Esteban Ocon even 30 seconds extra penalty.
Given the high number of offenders in the field, it’s probably a coincidence that podium finishers Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez got away with it – isn’t it? Behind it, it swept through the top 10: Norris, Alonso, Russell and Stroll each gained a place. Sainz, Hamilton and Gasly slipped back one position. Oh, why is this chapter called “Gravel Bed” – and not the name of the Fia race manager “Niels Wittich” as a heading? A gravel bed would be the solution to the problem of so-called track limits in one corner or the other.
Esteban Ocon
Often drove next to the track: Alpine pilot Esteban Ocon.
(Photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)
Before the race, the 26-year-old Frenchman, who competes for Alpine, excitedly talked about how great it was that Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and other investors bought into the racing team for 200 million dollars. Then on Sunday he managed a feat that the comic hero actor Reynolds could perhaps film one day: Ocon experienced an additional time penalty of 30 seconds on the Red Bull Ring.
How it works? Well: In order to get five seconds, you have to go off the track four times. If this succeeds for the fifth time, there is an additional ten seconds. After that, the register of sins is reset to zero, and the driver has finally served his sentence.
However, if he then relapses like Ocon, the game starts all over again: There are another five seconds for four violations, then another ten seconds for the fifth time, and so on …. Whoever has now guessed: Ocon drove ( at least) ten times off the track. The accusation that he is not capable of learning, however, can be made bad. He was never warned – it all came out afterwards.
Max Verstappen
Earned a first with an asterisk in Spielberg. With whipped cream on top. He snagged the most popular starting position both for the sprint on Saturday and then also for the Grand Prix on Sunday. Then he won both races – and also got the extra point for the fastest race lap. Although the stop was not without danger given that he was only 24 seconds ahead of his pursuer Leclerc.
His request that the crew should get ready to change tires “started five laps before the end, we said no at first, we’re so confident in the front, but he couldn’t be dissuaded,” said Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko. “And now he sleeps well and everything is fine.” You didn’t necessarily have to risk it, said Marko, but it didn’t help: “It was in his head and he needed it. And we want our drivers to be happy.”
Mateschitz family
When the founder of Red Bull died last October, Verstappen was also affected. “You have to accept that, but we also drive to make him proud and to continue his legacy,” promised the Dutchman in Spielberg: “Of course we want to win here.” And of course they got the win too. There was no special ceremony at Red Bull’s first home game without Mateschitz, when it was announced that races would be held at the track until at least 2030. “I don’t think that would have been in his mind,” said motorsport consultant Marko. There will be no Mateschitz curve, no statue or the like in the foreseeable future.
But the cameras and eyes were directed at his son Mark Mateschitz, 31, and the so-called crystal heiress Victoria Swarovski, 29. They have been a couple since Easter, but this week they were photographed for the first time while turtles. Mateschitz’s mother, Anita Gerhardter, 57, was honored for her charitable work at Palais Ferstel in Vienna. The couple sat at their table. So Swarovski already seems to be part of the Mateschitz family, which is handy: at some point the two families can combine their money stores. The Swarovskis’ fortune is estimated at four billion euros, that of Mateschitz at 26 billion euros. This finally results in a nice round sum.
Lewis Hamilton
According to legend, Lewis Hamilton has won one or two races before. The older viewers may even remember his last triumph: a year and a half ago, the seven-time world champion actually crossed the finish line in Saudi Arabia first. Long ago. And reason enough for Hamilton to ponder how phases of dominance, such as Red Bull is now experiencing, can be prevented in Formula 1 in the future. “I was very lucky to have one of these phases and Max (Verstappen, ed.) has one now. The way things are going, it will happen again and again and I don’t think we need that in sport.”
Teams with superior cars, he argued, could start work on their next design earlier than their competitors because they would have fewer resources to devote in the current season. Hamilton therefore demanded in Spielberg that there should be clearly defined periods in which teams can develop their cars for the coming season. “You would have to set a date before which it is not allowed to work on next year’s car. Let’s say August 1. Everyone has to stick to that.”
It should be undisputed that this theory is conclusive and is also covered by the history of the racing series. However, Verstappen, who has won seven of the nine races this season so far, his Red Bull team even all of them, pointedly rejected Hamilton’s reform proposal: “Life is unfair. That doesn’t just apply to Formula 1. We just have to deal with it ‘ he said, adding, ‘We didn’t talk about that when Lewis won his championships, did we?’
Nico Hulkenberg
He has now driven 190 races and not once stood on the podium. But he has earned a reputation in the past two races that makes up for it: Nico Hülkenberg is the champion of Saturday. At the Montreal race, he was among the beneficiaries of the qualifying chaos when the result was heavily influenced by the vagaries of the rainy weather. Originally second, Hulkenberg lost the position again because he was too fast under red flags. In Spielberg, he fought his way into fourth place in the shootout for the sprint on Saturday, squeezed in between the raking Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez on the first lap, and then held the latter an incredible twelve laps behind in his inferior Haas itself.
No wonder the 35-year-old is happily planning for the future. “Currently, the stars and the signs are such that the marriage will continue,” he said when asked about a possible contract extension at Haas beyond the 2024 season. When asked if he even felt ready for a top team, Hulkenberg replied: “Absolutely. A lot will happen on the driver market at the end of 2024, some contracts will expire there. I will be as attractive as possible.”
rain race
The fatal accident of 18-year-old Dilano van’t Hoff at a Formula 4 regional race in Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday also shocked the Formula 1 drivers in Spielberg. More than that: Some drivers took the accident as an opportunity to open a safety debate, which revolved around the question of whether wet racing in motorsport is too risky. The death of the young Dutchman was strikingly similar to Anthoine Hubert’s Formula 2 accident in 2019 at the same place. With the difference that the crash happened four years ago with the best visibility, while this time continuous rain was whirled up by the tires into a wall of water that was almost impossible to see through.
Van’t Hoff crashed into the crash barriers and from there back onto the track. The car was parked across the track on the Kemmel straight and was rammed by a competitor at full throttle near the cockpit. The other driver didn’t have a chance to react. “With so much spray, you only see the other car when it’s in front of you,” said Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard believes that wet races could soon be fundamentally questioned. “On certain stretches, especially the fast ones, the spray is so violent and visibility so poor that you tempt fate. We cannot afford an accident like this to happen again.”
Nico Hülkenberg believes that the ground-effect cars that have been circling since last year are increasing the visibility problem in Formula 1 “because they whirl up more water due to their design.” In the week after the next race at Silverstone, the world automobile association Fia is testing a fender over the rear tire at Silverstone to prevent the cars from spraying too much water.