HAMILTON UNDERLINES THE MERCEDES ADVANTAGE
Two races into the 2020 season and Mercedes has levelled the score at the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen had given the home team the glory in the previous two ‘normal’ seasons but, in this year without precedent, Mercedes has struck back mightily, and the score since 2018 is now 2-2. Since 2014, when the Austrian track rejoined the Formula 1 calendar after a decade’s absence, it’s actually 6-2. The more you look the worse it gets for Red Bull, and that was the main takeaway from the first Styrian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton was triumphant, hitting back after his season opener the preceding weekend had gone awry. The incident-packed Austrian GP had been about winning the changing circumstances of the race, which Mercedes of course did with Valtteri Bottas, but Red Bull had hoped Verstappen’s contra-strategy would keep him in the fight, and it should have given him the chance to take the victory when the gearbox gremlins struck Mercedes. Plus, Alex Albon had the chance to score an unlikely win on fresher tyres late on before his clash with Hamilton.
By contrast, and with the teams having their first chance to put what they learned in one race into an exact copy the next weekend, the Styrian GP was much more conventional. All the leading runners took the start on the soft rubber, with Bottas out of position in fourth after a glazed brake in qualifying hindered his challenge. With Verstappen starting alongside poleman Hamilton – and any hope of strategic tyre variation between Formula 1’s
