Lando Norris of the McLaren F1 Team. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Red Bull will be wary of McLaren's Lando Norris at a home Austrian Grand Prix that Max Verstappen has dominated in the past but this time looks to be a tight battle between the two.
The 11th round of the Formula One season is a sprint weekend, for the third time this year, with a 100km race at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg on Saturday before the main event on Sunday.
Red Bull's triple world champion, cheered on by his orange army of travelling fans, will hope to stretch the 69-point lead he enjoys over closest challenger Norris in the papaya-liveried McLaren.
Norris has a point to make after taking pole position in Spain last Sunday and finishing second. He was also runner-up in Canada - both races the 24-year-old felt he should have won.
Spielberg is the shortest lap, in terms of time, on the calendar with Verstappen taking pole last year in just over 64 seconds.
"On such a short lap it's going to be so tight," said Red Bull principal Christian Horner.
"We expect Mclaren and Lando to be fast again. Ferrari, Mercedes, who knows? If you look at the gap to those guys after the (Spanish) race it was pretty similar to last year. The one who's stepped up is Lando.
"We're having to fight really hard for the wins at the moment and we're having to be on the top of our game as a team ..., that's Formula One, that's as it should be."
Winner in Miami in May, Norris was also runner-up at Imola in Italy and in China, while last year's Austrian race won by Verstappen, for the fourth time in six years, was where McLaren brought breakthrough upgrades.
The Briton has now finished second 10 times in 23 races. He was 2.2 seconds behind Verstappen in Barcelona and 3.8 adrift in Canada. The gap at Imola was 0.7 and he beat the Dutch driver by 7.6 in Miami.
Austria, and then the UK's Silverstone, are favourite circuits where he has gone well in the past.
"We're on a good roll. We're doing well ... I need to just tidy up a few little bits and we'll be on top," he said in Spain.
"I'm confident. Every weekend we go into now, the car's performing extremely well. We're always there or thereabouts within a couple of tenths of pole."
Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Verstappen and Norris' team mates, Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri, will be hoping to get in on the act after disappointing results in Spain - the Mexican only eighth and Australian seventh.
Mercedes and Ferrari should be in the mix, with seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton taking his first podium of the season with Mercedes in Spain and Ferrari's Carlos Sainz holding the race lap record at the Red Bull Ring, albeit from 2020.
"It is a very different circuit to last weekend," cautioned Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
"There is plenty of low to mid-speed content, punctuated by some longer straights. That will provide another challenge and reference point for our car."
The chaos of last year, with the results revised five hours after the finish following a flurry of penalties to nearly half the field for exceeding track limits, should no longer be a concern with a strip of gravel added to turns nine and 10.
Formula One statistics for the Austrian Grand Prix at Spielberg, the 11th round of the 24-race championship and third sprint race of the season:
Lap distance: 4.318km. Total distance: 306.452km (71 laps)
2023 pole position: Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Red Bull one minute 04.391 seconds
2023 sprint winner: Verstappen
2023 race winner: Verstappen
Race lap record: Carlos Sainz (Spain) Ferrari 1:05.619, 2020
Start time: 1300 GMT (1500 local)
Austria
The circuit is owned by Red Bull and has the shortest lap, in terms of time, on the calendar with just 10 corners but aggressive kerbs.
It also has the second biggest difference between its highest and lowest points (69m), after the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.
A 2.5m wide gravel strip has been added behind the kerb at the exit to turns nine and 10 after a flurry of track limit violations last year.
This year's Austrian race is the 37th in the history of the championship, with the first held at Zeltweg airfield in 1964 and then moving to Spielberg's Oesterreichring (a shortened version later named A1 Ring and now Red Bull Ring) in 1970.
The circuit also hosted the Styrian Grand Prix in 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic.
There have been 10 winners from pole in 19 races on the current configuration. The run from pole to turn one is 330m, with most overtakes occurring into turns three and four. Turns two, five and eight are taken at full throttle.
Verstappen (2018, 2019, 2021, 2023), Valtteri Bottas (2017, 2020), Charles Leclerc (2022) and Lewis Hamilton (2016) are the only drivers on the current grid to have won the Austrian GP.
Hamilton won the 2020 Styrian Grand Prix, and Verstappen won in 2021, at the same circuit.
Lando Norris and his McLaren team Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Championship lead
Verstappen has led the championship for a record 49 successive races dating back to Spain in May 2022 and arrives in Spielberg 69 points clear of McLaren's Lando Norris.
Red Bull are 60 points clear of Ferrari.
Sprint
Verstappen has won nine of the 14 sprint races held so far.
Wins
Verstappen has won seven of 10 races this season, with Sainz triumphant in Melbourne, McLaren's Lando Norris in Miami and Leclerc in Monaco.
Ferrari are the only team to have had two winning drivers this season.
Hamilton has a record 103 career victories from 342 starts. He has now gone 55 races without a win, a run dating back to 2021.
Red Bull have won 120 races and are fourth in the all-time list of winners. Ferrari lead with 245, McLaren have 184 and Mercedes 125.
Verstappen has won 61 grands prix and is third on the all-time list. Michael Schumacher is second on 91.
Pole position
Hamilton has a record 104 career poles, his most recent in Hungary last year.
Verstappen took the first seven poles of the season, equalling Alain Prost's 1993 record, and eight in a row including the last race of 2023 - equalling Ayrton Senna's 1988-89 record.
Leclerc ended that run with pole in Monaco and George Russell was fastest for Mercedes in Canada with Norris taking the top spot in Spain.
The last time Red Bull went three races without pole position was in 2022 (Leclerc/Russell/Sainz in France/Hungary/Belgium respectively). Leclerc had four in a row that same year.
Podiums
Verstappen has 106 career podiums, Hamilton 198.
Verstappen has been on the podium eight times this season.
Milestone
Verstappen will have led the championship for 50 races in a row after Austria, whatever happens.
-Reuters