Formula 1 Winners & Losers: Austrian Grand Prix

Photo from Motorsport.com

The hills were alive with the sound of horsepower this weekend in Austria, with another weekend of the championship lead getting ever so closer.

Here are this weeks winners and losers.

Losers

5. Yuki Tsunoda

Does Yuki necessarily deserve to be here? No.

But someone needed to be in the fifth place spot, and there weren’t many losers today. So I’ll go with the guy who just sort of had a tough weekend overall.

4. Sebastian Vettel

Speaking of tough weekends…

Vettel, like Tsunoda, didn’t do anything wrong this weekend other than get punched off the track twice which completely ruined his sprint qualifying and also his race.

I imagine he’s not super happy.

3. Nicholas Latifi

I think the most damning thing I could say about Latifi this weekend is that I genuinely forgot he was even racing until he retired from the race.

2. Sergio Perez

Checo got terrible damage through no fault of his own on the opening lap due to a collision with George Russell, and couldn’t continue.

It could have been a very tough result for Red Bull in the constructors championship, but it wasn’t so bad considering what else happened.

1. Carlos Sainz

It was setting up to be another Ferrari 1-2 before, rather predictably, the Ferrari engine in the back of Sainz’s car exploded and he was forced to retire.

This season is halfway done and is still far from over, but it does feel like it could be a lot closer between Red Bull and Ferrari in the championship.

Winners

5. Daniel Ricciardo

Qualifying was a disaster for Daniel to say the least.

But his sprint race was good, and his race pace today was good as well to find himself finishing 9th in the race.

Not a bad recovery.

4. Lewis Hamilton

Lewis had a great opportunity to be right with Max and Charles in qualifying before he crashed and ruined that opportunity, and he didn’t have a great recovery in the sprint due to being stuck in traffic.

But he showed good pace today to end up back on the podium.

Mercedes, pace wise, are very far behind Red Bull and Ferrari, but these continuous good results are keeping them right in the thick of things.

3. Charles Leclerc

Leclerc said yesterday that he had a lot of confidence in their race pace, and he did not disappoint.

Leclerc was faster than Verstappen all day, even though he almost lost it at the end due to throttle issues.

Remember those Ferrari reliability issues I mentioned earlier? Yeah…

But, it didn’t ruin his race this time!

2. Fernando Alonso

Reliability issues in the sprint race meant that Alonso had to start dead last today, but drove his Alpine all the way to 10th to finish in the points.

The old man’s still got it.

1. America

Once again, Logan Sargeant wins the F2 feature race.

Once again, Haas gets double points, including a great 6th place finish from Mick Schumacher which won him driver of the day.

I’m not saying the two are related, but I’m also not NOT saying it…