Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen enjoyed a second win in seven days with victory at the Styrian Grand Prix in a commanding fashion to extend his lead in the driver championship to 18 points against Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton on Sunday here at the Red Bull Ring.
Following on from his win in the French Grand Prix, Verstappen led away from pole position at a dry Red Bull Ring, leading every lap of the race to claim his 14th career win, and his third at his team's Red Bull Ring home track.
Lewis Hamilton was unable to offer any serious answer to Verstappen's pace on race day, although he was at least able to limit the damage after taking the bonus point for fastest lap thanks to a late pit stop.
"Bit of a lonely race really, just trying to keep hold of these tyres. They've obviously made some big improvements over the last couple of races, I don't know where they've made up the time. Their long-run pace is better, we're losing too much time down the straights. They're faster, there's not much I can do in that respect. We need to find some performance from somewhere," F1's official website quoted Hamilton as a saying after the race.
Having started P5 after his grid drop for spinning in the pit lane on Friday, Bottas was able to claim third, holding off a late charge by the second Red Bull of Perez for Finn's first podium since the Spanish Grand Prix.
Behind, a fine race from McLaren's Lando Norris saw him follow up his P5 from last year's Styrian Grand Prix with the same result this weekend, having not been able to lap on the pace of the Red Bulls and Mercedes on Sunday. He was ahead of the Ferrari pair of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, who after a nightmare, point-less French Grand Prix, had a much better race in Austria.
Lance Stroll finished eighth for Aston Martin, while Fernando Alonso and Yuki Tsunoda rounded out the top 10. Kimi Raikkonen took 11th, ahead of the Aston Martin of Sebastian Vettel and the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo - who'd climbed up the order on Lap 1 but fell back to his starting position after losing power briefly - while Esteban Ocon took P14.
( With inputs from ANI )
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