Austrian Grand Prix 2015: Winners and Losers from Spielberg Race
Nico Rosberg's win in the 2015 Austrian Grand Prix has reignited the Formula One title battle.
Rosberg's success, on an afternoon when Lewis Hamilton, his Mercedes team-mate, failed to convert pole position into victory for the third time this season, has cut the reigning world champion's lead to just 10 points ahead of next month's British GP.
The Spielberg race was very much a tale of the two Mercedes drivers, for while Rosberg enjoyed a nearly faultless weekend, recovering strongly from his mistake in qualifying, Hamilton endured one of those days he'd rather forget, losing the lead at the start before incurring a penalty.
Behind the Silver Arrows pair, there were plenty of standout performances, with Felipe Massa reaching the podium for the first time in 2015 and Nico Hulkenberg maintaining his Le Mans momentum by securing his best result of the season.
There were also several disappointments, too, as Kimi Raikkonen once again failed to achieve a satisfactory result and McLaren-Honda's woes continued.
And what of Red Bull, you ask? Well, the less said about the home heroes, the better.
Here are the winners and losers from the Austrian GP.
Winner: Nico Rosberg
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You feared for Rosberg when he choked in qualifying, spinning off the track at the final corner when pole position was there for the taking.
It felt as though that mistake would condemn the German to another race spent staring at the rear of Lewis Hamilton's car, but Rosberg recovered to produce his most impressive performance of the season.
Despite a relatively short distance between the start line and the first corner, Rosberg benefited from a strong start on the inside line to nudge ahead of Hamilton at the first corner, completing a successful overtake on his Mercedes team-mate for the first time since the beginning of 2014.
After suppressing Hamilton's initial retaliation, positioning his car with perfection to defend his lead at Turns 2 and 3, Rosberg was flawless, surviving late concerns over tyre graining to take his third victory of 2015 and his second successive win in Austria.
Having closed the gap to Hamilton to just 10 points, it will be interesting to observe how the nature of his weekend will affect Rosberg going forward.
Not only did he show great resilience in responding from the disappointment of qualifying, but he was also the faster Mercedes driver across the weekend, and the psychological boost of finally passing Hamilton on track should mean he approaches the upcoming races with increased confidence.
Game on.
Loser: Lewis Hamilton
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By his own admission, Hamilton was the second-best Mercedes driver in Austria.
After claiming pole position almost by default, the reigning world champion surrendered the lead at one of the most challenging first corners on the calendar, where the pole-sitter is always vulnerable to a lunge down the inside.
The early safety car for the crash between Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso drained the momentum from his fightback against Rosberg, but Hamilton clung on to his team-mate across the first stint.
And it would have been compelling to see how the Mercedes drivers would have fared on the soft-compound tyres in the second stint and whether Hamilton could overtake Rosberg to claim his fifth victory of 2015.
But the British driver's five-second time penalty for crossing the white line on his exit from the pit lane brought a premature conclusion to the fight at the front.
Indeed, Hamilton could be considered fortunate for receiving a lenient punishment—one that had no effect on the final result—after making such a fundamental error, committing one of the ultimate sins on an active race track.
Needing to catch and pass Rosberg and build a lead of over five seconds to win the race, Hamilton, perhaps surprisingly, accepted defeat soon after the penalty, confirming this was a weekend of damage limitation.
Winner: Felipe Massa
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It was at the Red Bull Ring in 2014 where Felipe Massa secured his first pole position in six years, continuing his resurgence at Williams.
And while the Brazilian didn't quite hit those heights this time, Massa produced a more impressive all-round performance to claim his first podium finish of 2015.
After qualifying fourth, 0.3 seconds adrift of Sebastian Vettel, per the official F1 website, Massa managed to stay within touching distance of the four-time world champion throughout the first stint, with his perseverance rewarded when the German suffered a slow pit stop for the second time in as many weekends.
Ferrari's troubles in fitting Vettel's rear-right wheel meant Massa, who stopped two laps earlier, inherited third when the racing resumed.
The most impressive part of Massa's race, though, came in the latter stages as he simply absorbed the pressure from behind.
Like Valtteri Bottas—his Williams team-mate, who despite having a rare off-weekend in Austria has built a reputation as a consistent, composed performer—the Brazilian remained calm as the Ferrari filled his rear-view mirrors, utilising the straight-line speed of the FW37 and remaining neat and tidy in the twisty final sector to secure third place.
Rob Smedley, a colleague of the Brazilian at Ferrari and Williams, raised a few eyebrows in April when he told Autosport's Lawrence Barretto how Massa is currently driving better than when he came within a point of the world championship in 2008.
And after his return to the podium in Austria—hot on the heels of his surge from 15th on the grid to sixth in Canada—it is increasingly clear that Massa is not only back to his best but also driving better than ever.
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Loser: Kimi Raikkonen
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As the rain fell ahead of qualifying, it was predictable that Kimi Raikkonen—not Lewis Hamilton, not Nico Rosberg, not Sebastian Vettel—would be the front-runner most at risk of falling at the first hurdle.
So unreliable he has become that the Finnish driver can no longer be trusted to navigate his way through a session when there is uncertainty, when the variables come into play.
And although Raikkonen, according to Sky Sports' James Galloway, blamed Ferrari for his failure to progress from Q1, he had nowhere to hide when he crashed out on the opening lap at the Red Bull Ring.
Almost 12 months after sparking one of the most dangerous accidents of modern times at Silverstone, Raikkonen struggled to apply the throttle on the exit of Turn 2, lost control of his SF15-T and was collected by Fernando Alonso, whose McLaren mounted the Ferrari as the two cars slid along the barrier.
On a weekend when the first signs of pressure over his uncertain future at Ferrari appeared, a qualifying disaster followed by a first-lap retirement was the worst possible result for Raikkonen.
It's getting painful to watch the 2007 world champion fall from grace.
Winner: Force India
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Nico Hulkenberg told Autosport's Lawrence Barretto and Glenn Freeman how it took him "quite a while to get back into the groove" of driving an F1 car after his victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours race.
But you wouldn't have guessed it as the German led Force India, who, according to Sky Sports' James Galloway, were running an updated Mercedes power unit, to their best result of the season in Austria.
Hulkenberg was arguably the star performer in a challenging qualifying session, splitting the two Williams drivers to claim fifth on the grid, and was an irritant to Valtteri Bottas for the first half of the race, halting the Finn's progress.
Without the machinery to battle the Williams throughout the race, however, Hulkenberg was forced to settle for sixth, his best result since the 2014 Abu Dhabi GP, and it was telling that he was among those not to be lapped by race winner Nico Rosberg.
Sergio Perez was the sixth-place finisher at Austria 2014, but his chances of repeating those heroics were over after he was eliminated in the wet Q1 session.
But the Mexican produced yet another good performance at the Red Bull Ring, resisting pressure from Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado in the first stint before recovering from a delayed pit stop and "very strong vibrations on the front tyres," as he told the team's official website, to salvage ninth.
Force India's second double-points finish of the season has elevated the team to fifth in the constructors' standings, and with their B-spec car set to be introduced at the British Grand Prix, this could be the start of things to come.
Loser: McLaren-Honda
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With three long straights, the Red Bull Ring was never going to play to the strengths of McLaren's underpowered Honda engine, but the Woking-based outfit's lacklustre season plunged to a new low in the Austrian Grand Prix.
The engine-related penalties McLaren carried to Spielberg, as a result of exceeding the restrictions on engine component usage, meant the event was little more than a test session for the team, yet the reliability problems suffered by Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button throughout the race weekend meant little testing was conducted.
After both MP4-30s started from the very back of the grid, Alonso made it up to 14th in the space of just two corners, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time saw the two-time world champion's car act as a cushion to Raikkonen's spinning Ferrari on the back straight.
Button, meanwhile, managed to complete eight laps before retiring with what the team's official website confirmed was an "intake system sensor failure."
The 2009 world champion told the same source of the drivers' duty to "keep everyone motivated" and "continue to stay strong," but any smiles at McLaren at the moment must be through gritted teeth.
And with the next race at Silverstone also dependent on engine power, things may get even worse before they get better.
Winner: Pastor Maldonado
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Pastor Maldonado had to wait until the seventh round to score his first points of the 2015 season, but the Venezuelan has suddenly emerged as Lotus' most reliable scorer.
After securing seventh place in the Canadian Grand Prix, Maldonado repeated the feat in Austria to score points in two consecutive races for the first time since November 2012.
If anything, Maldonado and Lotus team-mate Romain Grosjean underperformed in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, finishing on the fringes of the top 10, when the E23 chassis had the pace to reach the fourth row of the grid.
While Grosjean was forced to retire with a gearbox issue after 34 laps, Maldonado made up for the team's missed opportunity on Saturday by perfecting an alternative strategy, starting on the soft tyres before a late charge on the faster super-softs.
That late charge included an absorbing battle with Max Verstappen, which saw Maldonado almost spin on two occasions—the first on the exit of Turn 1, the second while lining up a move in the DRS zone—before getting the job done.
Getting the job done was a task beyond Maldonado at the start of the season as he made several unforced errors and suffered countless reliability glitches, but his long-awaited return to form will be welcomed by a Lotus team who remain in the hunt for fifth in the constructors' championship.
Loser: The Red Bull Teams
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The very presence of the Austrian Grand Prix on the calendar is effectively a reward for Red Bull's impact on Formula One and, of course, the company's four consecutive championship triumphs between 2010 and 2013.
But the days of Sebastian Vettel, Christian Horner and Adrian Newey conquering the world felt like a distant memory in the Styrian mountains, where for the second straight season Red Bull were cast in a minor role at their own circuit.
Aside from the exploits of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr., the Scuderia Toro Rosso rookies, in wet conditions on Saturday morning and Q1, the Austrian GP was yet another disappointing race for Red Bull.
Like the McLaren drivers, Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat were hampered by engine-related penalties, with the Australian spending 50 laps, more than any other driver, on the soft-compound tyres to claim a solitary point, while the Russian limped to 12th.
Sainz's race, meanwhile, was ended on Lap 34 due to a loss of hybrid power, as Renault Sport's Cedrik Staudohar told Toro Rosso's official website.
It was, therefore, left to Verstappen to salvage some pride for Red Bull and the 17-year-old—despite having a wet setup, as he informed Martin Brundle during Sky Sports' television coverage of the event—claimed his first points in six races with eighth.
For the second year in succession at the Red Bull Ring, the opposition ran rings around Red Bull.
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