Nine Styrian GP question marks the shuffled grid creates

The Styrian Grand Prix pecking order was already looking intriguingly different to the Austrian GP situation even before the storms that meant a very wet qualifying session set the grid for what’s set to be a dry race.

That means plenty of drivers – from dominant poleman Lewis Hamilton up front to Friday star Sergio Perez on row nine – are out of position and there are a lot of unanswered questions going into today’s race.

Hamilton was off the pace in the dry

Although Mercedes was generally was far from dominant in the hot conditions of Friday – i.e. exactly the sort track temperatures that are expected for the race – Lewis Hamilton had a more specific problem.

He even surrendered conducting his long runs in practice two in order to have what he described as an inconsistency in rear grip investigated. The engineers did a cross weight and alignment check on his car and nothing immediately obvious was found.

But a deeper look into the evening revealed that the car had probably just fallen out of a sweet spot that can be quite narrow at such high track temperatures.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said after qualifying: “I’m confident he’ll be happier tomorrow than he was on Friday with the basic performance of the car.

“Going into the second Friday here we threw a few test items at the car. We were trying a few things on set-up, a few different things with the approach and maybe some of the things that last weekend we were keeping an eye on very closely in how we were running the car, this time we slipped into one or two little problems when it wasn’t in the right window.”

But even when in the window, the Mercedes’ competitiveness does appear to be blunted a little on the soft tyre when the track temperatures creep up into the low-50-deg Cs region. This was perhaps disguised a little in the (very hot) race last weekend by the early retirement of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

If Hamilton can use his pole position to retain track advantage, the problem should be manageable.

But if the Mercedes are running in the pack, it will be interesting to see what happens – and indeed what the Mercedes drivers choose as their starting tyre, given that wet qualifying means they have free choice and therefore the ability to keep off the potentially problematical soft compound. – Mark Hughes

Mercedes’ reliability concerns aren’t over

Last week Mercedes spent most of the race urging Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas to take care of their cars and avoid the kerbs in a situation Shovlin described as a “10 out of 10” level reliability concern in the gearbox.

New wiring looms fitted for this weekend are intended to partly solve that problem, and Friday practice was encouraging enough for Shovlin to say that 10 out of 10 fear is down to “probably more like a four or five out of 10” this week.

But the high suspension loadings over the kerbs were also contributed to Mercedes’ nerves, and that issue hasn’t gone away.

“We’ve not done enough running on this solution to really know whether there’s going to be an issue during the race,” Shovlin explained.

“We know we can do a few hundred kilometres OK and there isn’t a problem.

“Ticking off the race will be quite a big milestone for us if we can through that without a problem but that’s not the only thing that might catch us.

“They’re still relatively young cars. You’re always finding little bits that aren’t quite right and need a bit of improvement.

“We’re not complacent or unaware of the risks going into the race. It’s the same circuit as last week and we saw how many cars it finished off.”

Expect Mercedes radios to remain busy today. – Matt Beer

Can McLaren hang on for a podium?

Team boss Andreas Seidl refuses to get carried away with McLaren’s impressive start to the season, as Carlos Sainz Jr followed up Lando Norris’s race-one podium with a top-three position on the grid for round two.

Sainz took advantage of trouble for Valtteri Bottas and Alex Albon to land another impressive result for McLaren, which started last week’s race from third as well as Norris inherited a place when Lewis Hamilton got a grid penalty.

So this is becoming familiar territory for McLaren, although last week its race pace was not as strong and it did get overhauled.

“I wouldn’t say we were particularly that far off in the race last weekend,” reckons Sainz, though.

“We just probably went back to our normal position or where we deserve to be.”

Seidl can’t see his car being able to hold off Bottas or Albon if they have a smooth race, and he’s convinced Sergio Perez’s Racing Points is faster too. But Perez is down in 17th on the grid.

Ferrari? Renault? Definitely beatable for McLaren, reckons Seidl.

“Mercedes and the Red Bulls are out of reach anyway in terms of performance if they get everything together,” he said.

“Racing Point also with Perez was a lot quicker. At the same time we obviously benefit from the bad starting positions the Racing Points have.

“I think we will definitely be able to fight with the Ferraris and the Renaults around us so we have another great opportunity to score good points but at the same time it’s also very early still in the season. We first need to finish the races.

“We have to pull it off again. But I think we have everything in our hands to do a good race again.”

So a podium is probably not on the table without some assistance, but Sainz should have his eyes on a realistic top-five finish. – Scott Mitchell

Will Norris’s pains slow him?

Since the start of Friday practice, McLaren driver Lando Norris has been battling the pain he’s felt under the compression of braking with a combination of painkillers, shortened runs and rain.

He will only have one of those ‘assists’ available in the race, which he will start from ninth after a three-place grid penalty for not observing yellow flags in first practice.

Norris is either unwilling or unable to be precise about the problem, which he says isn’t entirely understood. But he did concede it’s some kind of internal bruising, although he does not expect it to get bad enough to do him any serious damage.

But with big points in the offing after last week’s third place finish, he’s determined to stick with it in the race and gave short shrift to the suggestion that it could be serious enough to force him out of the event.

“It’s not something I’m worried about really,” he said when asked by The Race on Saturday night about the risk of it getting bad enough to make him retire.

“I had it yesterday and it was getting fractionally worse but it’s not something I’m worried about in terms of any sort of damage.

“I think it’s just bruising, if anything, of something inside.

“I’ll do the things necessary to make sure I’m comfortable and confident for the whole race.

“I probably will be in some discomfort but it’s hard to know because I’ve not done a race stint with this problem.” – Edd Straw

Are midfield grid spots Ferrari’s real pace?

After a damning verdict from team boss Mattia Binotto and an acknowledgement from Charles Leclerc that the car is simply not fast enough, Ferrari faces a testing second Sunday in Austria.

While its woes were clearly exacerbated in the wet, and Friday’s cautious optimism is rooted in better high-fuel pace, it’s tough to see how Ferrari will make rapid inroads in the grand prix from Sebastian Vettel’s 10th place on the grid and Leclerc’s penalised 14th.

The car’s slow on the straights, and the midfield’s so close there’s likely to be a bit of a ‘DRS train’ at times.

Ferrari is a bang-average midfielder over one lap at the moment, and its big weakness means stronger race pace might be tough to access – without a repeat of last weekend’s dramatic grand prix, it’s tough to see a similar rise up the order.

Scrapping for points might genuinely be Ferrari’s real position. – SM

How far forward can Racing Point get?

Racing Point had a storming start to the second Austria weekend – leading first practice with Perez and fighting at the front throughout the afternoon too. After the unfulfilled promise of the opening weekend, the ‘Pink Mercedes’ was showing its illustrious lineage.

But this was the clearest case of a car that worked in the dry not doing so in the wet. Perez was caught out by how messy Q1 became and didn’t get chance to do a truly representative lap, but even with a clear run he felt the Racing Point wasn’t generating tyre temperature well enough to replicate its Friday pace in the rain. The only positive was that he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the stewards when they looked into a potential yellow flag offence in qualifying.

Perez said after qualifying there was “nothing we can do now other than learn from what went wrong” but also suggested the team might go off-piste on strategy to try to get back into position.

Given he has the third-fastest car in the field under him, Perez might find he can gain ground wheel-to-wheel without getting too inventive – though that DRS train effect may hamper him there.

“It’s a question of what we can do, what we can do with the strategy, and hopefully make some progress,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult to make any progress, to overtake. We have a good car underneath and we will try everything.”

Lance Stroll handled Q1 better but couldn’t get higher than 12th on the grid. That’s still a five-place headstart on Perez, though, for a driver famously combative on opening laps.

Multiple McLaren personnel this weekend have spoken of the threat from ‘one’ Racing Points – and they didn’t mean Stroll’s. That gives him a point to prove to the team his employer may well be fighting for third in the constructors’ championship. – MB

Are points realistic for Williams?

George Russell will line up 11th for the race having set the 12th-fastest time in qualifying, the best grid position for Williams since the 2018 Italian Grand Prix almost two years ago. Given the car is much improved since last year, could a points finish be on?

“Hopes have got to be points, right?” said deputy team principal Claire Williams when asked what the objective is.

“I don’t think I thought I’d be saying that in race two of this year. We wanted to make progress but I think everybody’s efforts at Williams – whether that be trackside or at the factory – have really come together over the past weeks and months, and certainly over the past 12 months and we have demonstrated an uptick.”

It’s still fanciful to imagine that the Williams is fast enough to score points on merit in a dry race, but when you factor in the expected high attrition it becomes far more likely.

There are seven teams that are decisively faster, but having fixed some of the cooling concerns that compromised its race pace last week, Williams should be a little stronger this Sunday compared to last.

And in Russell, it has a genuine star of the future who did great things with a terrible car last year.

If he can do great things with this better machine, and the cards fall for him, then a first points finish is eminently possible. But to expect him to do it without a little help from the outside is unrealistic. – ES

Renault’s chance to show its hand

Last weekend was a frustrating one for Renault, with Daniel Ricciardo out of the race early on with skyrocketing engine temperatures and Esteban Ocon battling to eighth after a disappointing Q2 mired him in the midfield.

Things look more promising for Sunday’s race, for which Ocon lins up fifth and Ricciardo eighth.

Add to that encouraging race pace shown on Friday, with Ricciardo looking good in first practice before his crash later on and Ocon putting in an eye-catching run in the afternoon, and the Renault should show its true colours.

“If we can be half a second off the Mercs in tomorrow’s race we’ll be in very good shape to fight those around us,” said Renault sporting director Alan Permane on Saturday night.

“It’s great to be able to fight with McLarens and the Ferraris and I think we will do that.

“Whether we can beat Carlos [Sainz], I don’t know. They had a very strong race last weekend we had a bit of the opposite – we were stuck in traffic, we had our unreliability.

“Looking at Friday pace and last Friday’s pace, we’ve got the pace, but it’s very difficult to say. I certainly want to say we can beat the Ferraris.”

Ocon, in particular, is worth keeping an eye on. He was set to qualify third on wets that were already used before Q3 before a lairy moment in the final sector.

That confidence-boosting performance might be all he needs to get in the thick of the fight for a strong finish. – ES

Quali star Gasly’s bid for repeat opportunism

AlphaTauri wanted to retire Pierre Gasly’s car early in the Austrian GP after debris got lodged in the braking system, but Gasly asked to persevere and fortunately the problem rectified itself.

That paved the way for a very opportunistic seventh-place finish despite the Red Bull junior team being, by its own admission, undeserving of that position on merit. Or rather, on raw pace.

A stunning qualifying performance in the wet this time around means Gasly should have no ill-feeling about lining up seventh and having another crack at points.

Yes, the car is slower than its immediate rivals in the dry, but Gasly starts from a hard-earned grid slot and has a real chance of banking another unexpectedly good result.

“We know we have cars that are a bit faster than us in normal conditions around us but we’ll have to fight,” pledged Gasly.

“We start P7 which is a great position on the grid. And we’ll give everything we have and hopefully we can get some other good points.” – SM

Grid Results