Formula One championship leader Max Verstappen wins with ease in Austria, goes 81 points clear

SPIELBERG – Max Verstappen won Red Bull’s home Austrian Grand Prix from pole position and with the fastest lap on Sunday, for the team’s 10th successive Formula One victory and ninth in nine races this season.

Verstappen, who also won Saturday’s 100km sprint race and leaves Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring with maximum points, stretched his lead over Mexican teammate Sergio Perez to 81 points with his fifth win in a row.

It was also the Dutch driver’s seventh of a dominant campaign, taking him ever closer to a third title.

Charles Leclerc was second, five seconds adrift, for Ferrari’s milestone 800th podium while Perez fought from 15th at the start to third in a race littered with time penalties as drivers repeatedly exceeded the track limits.

“Amazing race, the car was on fire today,” said Verstappen, whose victory was his career’s 42nd and one more than the late Brazilian great Ayrton Senna.

It was also his fifth success at the Red Bull Ring, more than any driver, and left him more than three race wins clear of Perez.

“I’m just enjoying the moment driving this car and working with this team. The sprint weekend is always hectic and a lot of things can go wrong, but luckily a lot of things went right,” said Verstappen.

His team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports: “He’s in incredible form. The team is operating at such a high level. That now matches our best in-season run of results, so an incredible performance. We just want to keep it going.”

It was still not a perfect afternoon for the 25-year-old, however, with his phenomenal run of 249 successive race laps led ending on lap 26 when he pitted and Leclerc took over at the front.

Said Leclerc: “It’s good to be back on the podium. The upgrades we brought on the car made me feel better in those conditions, which is good for the future.”

Verstappen passed the Monegasque for the lead on lap 35 of 71 and then pulled away, having so much time that he pitted on the penultimate lap for soft tyres to take the fastest lap bonus point from Perez.

Carlos Sainz was fourth for Ferrari, with Lando Norris fifth for McLaren and Fernando Alonso sixth for Aston Martin.

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton was seventh for Mercedes, with teammate George Russell eighth, and Pierre Gasly was ninth for Alpine. Lance Stroll took the final point for Aston Martin.

Hamilton was among a string of drivers shown a black and white warning flag for going beyond the white lines with all four wheels, collecting a five-second penalty.

“I can’t keep it on the track, the car won’t turn,” Hamilton, who had passed Norris for fourth at the start to slot in behind the Ferraris, told his team when warned about the violation.

His teammate Russell told Sky Sports: “The pace was substantially worse than we were expecting. We need to get to the bottom of it.”

Sainz and Gasly both also collected five-second penalties, along with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, Williams’ Alex Albon and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda.

Nico Hulkenberg was the only retirement, the German pulling off and stopping on lap 14 with smoke coming from the engine of his Haas. “I lost power,” he said.

A minute’s silence was held before the start as a mark of respect for 18-year-old Dutch driver Dilano van’t Hoff, who died in a junior series race at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit on Saturday.

The Red Bull Ring will remain on the Formula One calendar until at least 2030, after the sport announced a contract extension earlier on Sunday.

The race in Spielberg is a home one for the energy drinks company that owns two of Formula One’s 10 teams in champions Red Bull Racing and Italy-based AlphaTauri.

Both sides agreed a four-year extension to 2027 only last March.

Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali said the latest extension was a tribute to the “vision and passion” of Red Bull’s late co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz,

who died last October.

REUTERS