The Austrian Grand Prix turned into a straight fight between the Mercedes drivers as the anticipated threat from Ferrari failed to materialise.
While Mercedes have dominated the season so far – this was their fifth one-two in eight races – they expected Ferrari to push them much harder in Austria.
But as Sebastian Vettel dropped back in the first stint of the race the contest for victory was between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
“After the very early safety car, it then became clear that Nico had a slight pace advantage over Lewis – but more importantly that our car was showing a bigger advantage than we had anticipated over Ferrari,” explained the team’s executive director for technical Paddy Lowe.
Vettel had dropped over ten seconds behind the leaders by lap 22. His deficit then more than doubled when Ferrari were unable to get his right-rear wheel to attach during his pit stop.
However having switched to the soft tyres Vettel began to show the kind of pace which had Mercedes worried before the race began. He gained six seconds over the rest of the race before Rosberg backed off considerably in the final two laps.
Rosberg had already set the fastest lap of the race much earlier – just before the half-way point. Significantly, he did it on his very first lap out of the pits – a decisive moment in the fight for victory.
2015 Austrian Grand Prix fastest laps
Each driver’s fastest lap:
Rank | Driver | Car | Fastest lap | Gap | On lap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1’11.235 | 35 | |
2 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1’11.475 | 0.240 | 60 |
3 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 1’11.499 | 0.264 | 44 |
4 | Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 1’11.613 | 0.378 | 58 |
5 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull-Renault | 1’11.689 | 0.454 | 69 |
6 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus-Mercedes | 1’11.785 | 0.550 | 58 |
7 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams-Mercedes | 1’12.248 | 1.013 | 52 |
8 | Daniil Kvyat | Red Bull-Renault | 1’12.316 | 1.081 | 54 |
9 | Max Verstappen | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’12.349 | 1.114 | 64 |
10 | Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 1’12.377 | 1.142 | 58 |
11 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’12.516 | 1.281 | 56 |
12 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes | 1’12.541 | 1.306 | 62 |
13 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus-Mercedes | 1’12.881 | 1.646 | 34 |
14 | Felipe Nasr | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’13.050 | 1.815 | 57 |
15 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’13.234 | 1.999 | 28 |
16 | Roberto Merhi | Manor-Ferrari | 1’14.939 | 3.704 | 58 |
17 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Honda | 1’41.204 | 29.969 | 7 |
18 | Will Stevens | Manor-Ferrari | 1’49.759 | 38.524 | 1 |
2015 Austrian Grand Prix
- Strong run wins Hulkenberg Driver of the Weekend
- F1 continues to underwhelm in 2015
- 2015 Austrian Grand Prix team radio transcript
- Top ten pictures from the 2015 Austrian Grand Prix
- 2015 Austrian GP Predictions Championship results
PorscheF1 (@xtwl)
21st June 2015, 19:18
Every single race since Bahrein….
Simon (@weeniebeenie)
21st June 2015, 19:57
Indeed. They get our hopes up for a challenge on Friday and then it comes to nothing in the race. Either Ferrari are consistently running light on Friday or (and I think more likely) is that Mercedes just don’t turn the wick up at all on Fridays.
Samhainhell
21st June 2015, 20:20
Or that way they just have an excuse in case they lose xD
pastaman (@)
21st June 2015, 21:26
Agreed, is anyone really “surprised” anymore
alanore (@alanore)
22nd June 2015, 17:11
They seems to take turns between Toto/Lauda/Ros/Ham to make a comment about how quick the Ferrari’s are after Friday’s practice.
I think its Lauda’s turn to be ‘worried’ about Ferrari’s pace at Silverstone.
Edgar
21st June 2015, 19:32
Even this “soft tyres kind of pace” isn’t real. Massa too, while trying to maintain the gap to Vettel was faster than both Mercedes.
Mercedes was already cruising. Their battle ended when Hamilton made the mistake exiting the pits.
Key (@key75)
21st June 2015, 19:59
Sometimes I’m more surprise about all this talk coming from Mercedes and media all around, about Ferrari having similar pace to Mercs and maybe challenging them. Arrivabene never said Ferrari would fight with Mercs this year for the title.. The only thing he promised is that they would try to get 2 wins and be the best of the rest (which lately isn’t really working)
Deej92 (@deej92)
21st June 2015, 22:05
Same here. I think people need to keep their expectations of Ferrari in check. Mercedes almost always have a pretty comfy performance gap over them. I don’t read too much into Ferrari’s practice pace compared to Mercedes because by now everyone knows Mercedes aren’t showing their hand fully.
Ferrari are still having a pretty strong season considering last year.
Patrick (@paeschli)
21st June 2015, 20:09
I don’t think Vettel would have been able to get within 5 seconds of Hamilton even if his pit stop went right.
David-A (@david-a)
21st June 2015, 20:57
Yeah, he was already 10 seconds behind, with the two Mercs on fresh tyres. They could have pulled further away if needed.
David-A (@david-a)
21st June 2015, 20:58
I mean 10 seconds behind before the pitstop.
DaveS
22nd June 2015, 17:12
Help me understand something … the comment about Massa being faster than either Mercedes … if you isolate the graph to just Massa and Nico, the big differences seems to be that Nico had a quicker pitstop and outlap, otherwise, pretty close. Am I reading this correctly?