MPH: Austria favoured Leclerc last year. Will F1 history repeat itself?

F1

The unique Red Bull Ring has a reputation for shaking up the F1 order, with several factors pointing to the chance of a shock Max Verstappen defeat, writes Mark Hughes, who is keeping a close watch on Ferrari

Charles Leclerc overtakes Max Verstappen in the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix

Leclerc took advantage of struggling Red Bull in last year's Austrian GP

Antonin Vincent / DPPI

Author

Mark Hughes

The constituent reasons for any given grand prix turning out the way it does are many and varied. Relatively easy to assess in retrospect, especially once you’ve analysed and heard what key people have had to say and to fit the pieces of data together, but less so in advance.

Even if we know with a fair degree of confidence coming into any ’23 grand prix weekend that Max Verstappen is likely to win it, how he does so, how close the competition can get, who forms the closest threat and why, are all imponderables. Even in this age of optimisation, of deep monitoring and understanding of all the variables.

The Red Bull Ring is historically pretty effective at shaking up those variables. It’s an unusual venue in many ways, with only seven corners that the car recognises as such, unusual cooling demands and unconventional rewards and penalties for downforce and drag, very much rear tyre limited. Add to those a couple of key car updates (notably Ferrari) and the fact that it’s a sprint format race. Verstappen hasn’t fared too well at those historically, though whether that correlation has any element of causation in it is an interesting question.

Run up to hairpin at Red Bull Ring

One of few corners at the Red Bull Ring

Ferrari

With so few corners it’s one of those tracks where getting the front tyres up to temperature by the start of a qualifying lap can be problematic for some cars. This could potentially hurt the Red Bull with its very tight platform control and help Ferrari, which never seems to struggle for front temperatures. But in the race it’s all about control of the rear temperatures and in this the Red Bull and Ferrari are both good, this Mercedes not so great, with Aston perhaps somewhere in between.

Although relatively insensitive to drag levels, it’s the track with the highest proportion of a qualifying lap driven with the DRS open and the Red Bull’s impressive speed gain with DRS will be rewarded regardless. Even though the Mercedes was equally impressive in this regard in Barcelona.

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It’s one of those tracks – like Baku and Monaco – to which Charles Leclerc is particularly well attuned. He loves that demand of heavy but precise braking and if the car is giving him the messages he likes his skills can be worth lap time over even Verstappen.

Given that Pirelli has brought the three softest compounds and the softest of them (the C5) can probably be discarded as a race tyre, the race strategy becomes interesting. If the rear tyres stand up, can be pushed to a competitive time without too much heat degradation, then the fastest way is to one-stop. But if they are not, if the medium compound just cannot give a good combination of range and resistance to overheating, then the ideal moves to a two-stop. Just adding or subtracting a bit of cloud cover can totally alter that picture. Any significant variation in how hard two different cars use those rear tyres could end up being particularly strategically intriguing, offering the possibility of a shock.

Last year there were two races where Verstappen and Red Bull just did not quite find the car’s sweet spot and were untypically struggling for race pace: here and Interlagos, both of which were sprint events. Is there anything in that? The format gives you only FP1 to decide upon a set-up before you are straight into qualifying. Is there something about the Red Bull’s sophistication, the way its floor works in conjunction with everything else, which makes it more fiddly and time-consuming to get into that sweet spot?  Or was it just coincidence that these struggles came at these sprint races? He dominated the other sprint race of Imola, after all.

These and many more are just the background variables which two days from now will form the kaleidoscope of factors determining how it happened the way it did. That all still leaves room for the human factors of talent, attitude and performance under pressure which may be equally crucial.

All that said, keep a special eye out on Ferrari…

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