Who was the most unfortunate driver at the Austrian GP? — What you missed

Sitting powerless on the pitwall was team principal Binotto who, having seen Sainz retire and witnessed more than a few Ferrari issues this year, couldn’t take the tension.

“I stopped watching the race at that time,” he said. “I was not [even looking at the timing screens]. [I was] looking around,” he said.

The team is still investigating the cause of the issue. “On the initial feedback, it’s more a mechanical one we got, but I cannot give you more details than that,” said Binott.

 

Post-race trouble for the podium finishers 

There were 43 offences recorded for exceeding track limits during the race and the stewards didn’t stop when the chequered flag was waved.

All of the top three were given suspended €10,000 fines because their physios had joined them in parc fermé before they were weighed, in breach of the procedure for the race.

For that, they can blame Michael Schumacher, whose ‘heavy crash helmet’ contributed to the pre-weighing restrictions.

In 1995, when the minimum weight limit was changed to include car and driver, Schumacher’s weight was found to have ballooned from 69kg the year before to 77kg ahead of the season-opening Brazilian GP.

At that time, it wasn’t clear that drivers would be weighed after the race as well. When race-winner Schumacher stepped onto the scales, he was found to be 71.5kg — still within the legal limit — and seemingly holding a lucrative secret to instant weight loss.

When quizzed, the then Benetton driver attributed the difference to his heavier training crash helmet and drinking lots of water.

Since then, officials have tightened post-race rules to prevent drivers being handed anything heavy that could skew the scales.

 

Fernando Alonso wins the hardest-earned point of the weekend

Fernando Alonso offered a lesson in perseverance at the Red Bull Ring, clearing obstacle after obstacle to score a point for tenth.

That’s a respectable enough result after he started from the back of the grid, but the two-time world champion he was clearly gutted after the race, knowing he could have done better.

Alonso and Alpine came into the weekend confident of a strong performance and saved all their soft tyres during the first practice session so they could blitz qualifying and the team was clear of midfield rivals McLaren, with Ocon starting the sprint race fifth and Alonso eighth on the grid.

But eighth on the grid Alonso remained when his car wouldn’t start for the formation lap and he was wheeled into the pits, not to re-emerge that afternoon.

It put him to the back of the grid for the Grand Prix, where he was poised to deliver one of his trademark charges. By lap 18 he was in the top ten and battling in the five-car fight. On lap 33, he was wagging his finger at Yuki Tsunoda for squeezing him off the track as he went past.

And he looked to be finally in luck when Carlos Sainz’s flaming Ferrari triggered a virtual safety car. Having only used hard tyres up to that point, it reduced the time loss for his final pitstop to fit another compound (medium) as required.

That dropped him from seventh to ninth — with fresher rubber and within striking distance of Norris and Magnussen ahead. But nothing would run smoothly at the Red Bull Ring. He felt huge vibrations on the new tyres and had to stop again, tumbling down to 14th.

Despite still scraping a point, Alonso was left rueing the race. “We could have been P6, P7,” said Alonso over team radio. “Speechless man, so difficult to understand many things this season.”

 

Further misery for Nicholas Latifi

Latifi is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment.

He is yet to score points this season, while racing with an old-spec car despite new updates being fitted to Alex Albon’s machinery.

In Austria the difference between the two specs was clear because Albon was fighting with the rest of the pack on the periphery of points, while Latifi had quite an invisible race.

It only lasted 48 laps and he was running massively off the pace until Williams took the decision to retire him.

“I can’t turn the car in turn nine, it’s massively damaged,” said Latifi over team radio. “We’re running three seconds off the pace here, it’s the right-hand corners which are way worse than the left.”

He explained that his problems dated back to the start of the grand prix. “We sustained floor damage from running over some debris at the start of the race and I ran wide on one kerb,” he said.

“Towards the end of the first stint I could feel the balance getting worse, beginning of the second stint there was a lack of downforce and pace.

“The decision was to retire the car to save the engine mileage.”