Valtteri Bottas scored his second victory in the Austrian Grand Prix last year. But an unlucky start to 2018 means he is yet to head the podium this season.
Will that change this weekend? Here are the Austrian Grand Prix talking points.
Too close to call
The contest at the sharp end remains thrillingly close. Three different teams have taken pole position in the last three races. Neither Mercedes nor Ferrari seems an obvious favourite for pole position this weekend. And Red Bull, which has never won its home race, can expect to be a factor on Sunday.
Last week in Paul Ricard a first-lap crash opened the way for Lewis Hamilton to take a straightforward victory which put him back in the lead of the championship. Next week he will head to his Silverstone stronghold, where he has won for the last four years in a row, and can expect to be in strong shape again this year.
That makes this race all the more crucial for Sebastian Vettel to ensure the championship leader doesn’t put a mid-season sprint on and leave him behind in the standings. A lot of points are going to be scored in this spell of five races within six weeks.
Will Bottas get a change of luck?
When the season began the talk around Valtteri Bottas was whether he could do enough to justify Mercedes keeping him on for a third season. In terms of performance he has done well, but the results haven’t come yet. He scored his second victory of 2017 in Austria but he is win-less so far this year.
Last weekend’s race was another demonstration of why that isn’t entirely his fault. Vettel turfed him off at the first corner, meaning a potential second-place finish became seventh. But that points loss was nothing compared to Baku, where a puncture from debris handed a likely Bottas win to his team mate. He was on course to win in China too until the Safety Car appeared.
The driver market
Red Bull’s announcement they will use Honda engine next year fired the starting gun in the driver market. Suddenly Mercedes are hinting they’ll have a deal with Hamilton sorted soon, Ferrari are rumoured to be homing in on Charles Leclerc, and McLaren have been linked to Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen.
Will we get an announcement this weekend? As Red Bull’s home race, it would be an obvious venue for them to lay their cards out. With Mercedes seemingly satisfied in their current line-up, Ferrari considering Leclerc and Renault apparently unwilling to pay the kind of salary Ricciardo is seeking, staying at Red Bull now seems his only chance of getting a race-winning car next year.
Expect the first pieces of the puzzle for the 2019 F1 driver market to fall into place soon.
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McLaren’s alarming slump
Fernando Alonso’s fifth place in the first race of the year increasingly looks like a false dawn. McLaren’s results have got steadily worse since then, and he hasn’t scored in any of the last three races. Both the team’s cars were eliminated in Q1 last weekend.How has it gone so badly wrong? Group CEO Zak Brown said in France the team has an aerodynamic problem which it wasn’t able to detect in the wind tunnel. At least one rival team technical officer expressed scepticism about this explanation.
Whatever has gone wrong, it’s gone wrong quickly. Can they turn it around as quickly, with their home race one week away?
Grosjean’s dire season
‘When will Romain Grosjean score a point?’ has been a running theme of race previews so far this year. The question is being asked ever more urgently as Kevin Magnussen took his fourth points finish of the season in France and is single-handedly keeping Haas in seventh place in the championship.
The team were very competitive at this track last year. But the pressure is building on Grosjean to deliver his long overdue first score of 2018.
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2018 so far
Rate the Race
| Race | Average score |
|---|---|
| 2018 Australian Grand Prix | 6.096 |
| 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix | 8.322 |
| 2018 Chinese Grand Prix | 8.616 |
| 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix | 8.536 |
| 2018 Spanish Grand Prix | 4.811 |
| 2018 Monaco Grand Prix | 5.088 |
| 2018 Canadian Grand Prix | 4.243 |
| 2018 French Grand Prix | 6.367 |
Driver of the Weekend
Are you going to the Austrian Grand Prix?
If you’re heading to Austria for this weekend’s race, we want to hear from you.
Who do you think will be the team to beat in the Austrian Grand Prix? Have your say below.
And don’t forget to enter your predictions for this weekend’s race. You can edit your predictions until the start of qualifying:
2018 Austrian Grand Prix
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Chaitanya
28th June 2018, 13:29
Shy Finn has become the unluckiest driver on grid somehow. Hope his luck changes soon.
Sumedh
28th June 2018, 13:39
Bottas’ bad luck is reaching astronomical proportions now. I put his season right up with Hamilton in 2012 and Raikkonen in 2005. Sometimes, it just isn’t your year. Keep your chin up lad. You have been driving very well. Better than Ocon for sure.
Jere (@jerejj)
28th June 2018, 14:20
Will Bottas get a change of luck? – Hopefully.
GeeMac (@geemac)
28th June 2018, 14:29
On McLaren, I predict another tough weekend for them. If the car is as draggy as people are making out they should struggle given the layout of the Red Bull Ring.
JohnH (@johnrkh)
28th June 2018, 14:32
Well he has the car and he has shown he can drive OK. The ball is in his court.
Hugh (@hugh11)
28th June 2018, 14:46
Funny how you mention Ricciardo’s move to McLaren, then the next point is how terrible McLaren were at Paul Ricard, which probably really put Ricciardo off going there. I think he’ll only go to a team who are already competitive, not one which has ‘potential’
I expect him to stay at Red Bull for lack of a better option, I think Leclerc will go to Ferrari but the Merc and Red Bull will stay as they are.
Garns (@)
28th June 2018, 16:44
Lets hope so!! He has ben driving great, top step in Austria?
frood19 (@frood19)
28th June 2018, 16:52
I suspect this is an unpopular opinion but I think the cars are too reliable these days. in terms of the championship bottas is only ~2 wins from the top but the likelihood of him making up that ground on hamilton and vettel without reliability problems is very low. when i started following the sport if a driver was 20 points down mid-season they were by no means considered out of the running for the title. in 1995 damon hill was 17 points behind with only 5 races left and he was confident he could still win (he didn’t of course, but that’s not the point). now it seems the die is cast if a driver is in such a position, even at this early stage in the season.
it was more exciting for the championship fight when there was a genuine sense that everything could change – i realise it takes some of the sport out of it and that it (kind of) happened recently when hamilton lost all those points in malaysia in 2016 – but mostly nowadays you kind of know what’s going to happen before it does. i guess it’s a product of the teams being more organised than they were 25 years ago (better use of IT perhaps? better management structures? could be anything) but the upshot is that the freak results are vanishingly rare.
Bcoliver
28th June 2018, 19:54
what about Bottas starts winning some races?
Esploratore (@esploratore)
29th June 2018, 2:39
It’s absolutely none of his fault he didn’t, and indeed, with this reliability he’s out already, unless bad luck strikes both leaders later on.
Roland
28th June 2018, 20:16
Both Bottas and Räikkönen have been incredibly unlucky this season. Bottas has lost a win and Kimi two podiums through mechanical failures – I’d hope this will change now.
DonSmee (@david-beau)
28th June 2018, 20:27
Please elaborate on the rival team technical officer who says McLaren has other problems, or at least send us a link to the story. I am out of the loop with that one, keith!