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Results from Austria:



Mercedes
TMW race winner: Bottas (63%)
Hamilton 6 - 3 Bottas
Hamilton 67% - 33% Bottas

A rare weekend to forget for both Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton allows Valtteri Bottas to pick up his third TMW win of 2019. The vote wasn't overwhelmingly in the Finn's favour but he did pick up nearly 2/3 of the vote, enough to put an end to Hamilton's run of four successive TMW wins.

Ferrari
TMW race winner: Leclerc (97%)
Vettel 6 - 3 Leclerc
Vettel 45% - 55% Leclerc

Charles Leclerc may have fallen agonisingly short of winning the race but there was no such disappointment with the TMW vote as the young Monegasque driver clocked all but one of the votes to claim his second successive TMW win. While he may still trail 6-3 on the year he does now boast an advantage in terms of the percentage of the vote, having received 147 out of the 269 total votes for the Ferrari pair so far.

Red Bull
TMW race winner: Verstappen (100%)
Verstappen 9 - 0 Gasly
Verstappen 97% - 3% Gasly

For the fourth race in five, Max Verstappen takes 100% of the TMW vote. Probably the most obvious 100% of the season, too.

Renault
TMW race winner: Ricciardo (93%)
Ricciardo 7 - 2 Hulkenberg
Ricciardo 58% - 42% Hulkenberg

Having been relatively close for the first few races (mainly thanks to Nico winning the first two votes) the Renault TMW scores are now threatening to get a little messy for The Hulk. It's seven TMW wins in a row for the Honey Badger and the gap in the percentage is now starting to creep up...

Haas
TMW race winner: Grosjean (63%)
Magnussen 6 - 3 Grosjean
Magnussen 63% - 37% Grosjean

Another tough weekend for Haas. It's almost comical to think that Magnussen actually put the car P5 on the grid when you consider just how poor their race pace was. It didn't help that P5 immediately became P10 due to grid penalties, and it got no better for the Dane from that point onwards. Grosjean hardly set the world alight but did at least end up ahead of his combustable teammate, earning himself a third TMW win of 2019.

McLaren
TMW race winner: Norris (65%)
Sainz 6 - 3 Norris
Sainz 47% - 53% Norris

The McLaren TMW vote was one of those rare ones where a strong argument could be made for both drivers, and for entirely different reasons too. Lando Norris qualified sixth, started fifth, flirted with third and eventually ended up sixth, ahead of Pierre Gasly and comfortably best of the drivers outside of the big three teams. Carlos Sainz's weekend was compromised by a grid penalty condemning him to a start on the back row of the grid. Yet he delivered a strong recovery drive, making it all the way up to eighth. Both drivers got TMW votes but it was the young Brit who received the larger amount, claiming TMW win number three for the year and increasing his percentage advantage a little in the process.

Racing Point
TMW race winner: Perez (93%)
Perez 7 - 2 Stroll
Perez 65% - 35% Stroll

Another meh weekend for Racing Point saw both cars eliminated in Q1, with Sergio Perez doing a better job on Sunday to recover up to the cusp of the points. It earns the Mexican his seventh TMW victory of 2019.

Alfa-Romeo
TMW race winner: Raikkonen (97%)
Raikkonen 8 - 1 Giovinazzi
Raikkonen 90% - 10% Giovinazzi

You have to feel a little for Antonio Giovinazzi. Qualifies eighth (which I think - and I've got to confess I haven't checked! - was his best in F1 so far) and drives a good race to claim his first points finish. His reward? A single TMW vote worth 3%. The reason? Kimi finished a position ahead of him on both Saturday and Sunday. Still, the reality is he's getting closer to Raikkonen and at least making people think about who they vote for, and as a rookie who hasn't even raced since the end of 2016, that's no small feat.

Toro Rosso
TMW race winner: Albon (81%)
Albon 4 - 5 Kvyat
Albon 40% - 60% Kvyat

Toro Rosso, like a couple of other teams, hardly had a memorable weekend. But it was a better (or should that be slightly less worse?) weekend for Alex Albon as the Thai rookie overcame starting two places behind his teammate to finish ahead of him, bagging himself his first TMW victory in five races. Based on the scores alone, Toro Rosso is the most competitive of the ten TMWs and could be tied at 5-5 next time I write one of these up.

Williams
TMW race winner: Russell (100%)
Russell 9 - 0 Kubica
Russell 92% - 8% Kubica

Back to normality in Austria as George Russell receives all the TMW love, leaving Robert Kubica to pick up a fourth zero vote race of 2019.

Disappointing to see Norris not getting many votes, he had a superb qualifying and drove just fine in the race but was screwed over by the Safety Car while Sainz benefited from it enormously. Similar case with Albon.

Impossible to pick from the Haas drivers based on the race, so I went for Grosjean for qualifying ahead.

Stroll wins the RP battle. Perez screwed his own race by hitting Hulkenberg.

The others are fairly straightforward I think. Poor old Kubica though, I might have to start giving him sympathy votes.

Not voted yet as I haven't had chance to watch the race recording but surprised Bottas isnt getting more love.

Hamilton looked quicker and likely would have won safety car or not IMO but that is somewhat hypothetical. Bottas outqualifed and out raced him wheel to wheel at the start and once the safety car came out any chance of Bottas fighting for the win was gone.

Not a fight he would likely have won IMO but he lost the chance to try through bad luck and up until that point he was winning the teammate battle.

Hamilton: beaten by the equivalent of 42cm in qualifying and much better race pace than Bottas. I think he'd have won without the safety car
Leclerc: was quicker than Vettel all weekend and didn't cause a collision
Verstappen: even though it was Gasly's best weekend, Verstappen was still comfortably faster when it mattered
Ricciardo: qualified well and raced well
Grosjean: as someone said above giving this to Grosjean on the basis of qualifying
Norris: out-qualified his team mate and got a bad strategy
Stroll: almost by default because his qualifying is still s**t but he didn't ruin his race by crashing
Raikkonen: did a really solid job in the race
Albon: I've gone for Albon because of qualifying and he was unlucky with the safety car I think and ended up with really old hard tires at the end. I think Kvyat got lucky in that sense?
Russell: faster all weekend again. Kubica is wasting a seat.

A few judgment calls here, largely coming down to how you feel about drivers who 'deserved' to be ahead without the safety car. As always, there are a few obvious ones:

Leclerc over Vettel -- Faster in qualifying, unlucky to ever end up behind Seb due to the safety car, and managed not to plow into the back of Verstappen when they were fighting...
Verstappen over Gasly -- The gap may have been lower due to Gasly actually looking like a credible F1 driver for a change, but Max was still better.
Ricciardo over Hulk -- I don't see any doubt about this one. Ricciardo got screwed over by the safety car and still finished ahead, nearly beating someone who gained from it.
Stroll over Perez -- He managed not to make a horribly inept overtake attempt and ruin his own race.
Raikkonen over Giovinazzi -- Just better.
Russel over Kubica -- Yep.

And the ones that are more of a judgment call (usually due to the safety car):

Bottas over Hamilton -- You can argue about whether Lewis would have won anyway, but I think Bottas deserves some votes for being the car who was actually ahead.
Grosjean over Magnussen -- Both Haas cars were terrible, but I blame KMag for the crash.
Norris over Sainz -- Much better in qualifying, and unlucky to lose out in the safety car lottery due to a missed call by his team.
Albon over Kvyat -- Was on course to beat his teammate before his engine started acting up, so he gets my vote.

Exediron wrote:A few judgment calls here, largely coming down to how you feel about drivers who 'deserved' to be ahead without the safety car. As always, there are a few obvious ones:

Leclerc over Vettel -- Faster in qualifying, unlucky to ever end up behind Seb due to the safety car, and managed not to plow into the back of Verstappen when they were fighting...
Verstappen over Gasly -- The gap may have been lower due to Gasly actually looking like a credible F1 driver for a change, but Max was still better.
Ricciardo over Hulk -- I don't see any doubt about this one. Ricciardo got screwed over by the safety car and still finished ahead, nearly beating someone who gained from it.
Stroll over Perez -- He managed not to make a horribly inept overtake attempt and ruin his own race.
Raikkonen over Giovinazzi -- Just better.
Russel over Kubica -- Yep.

And the ones that are more of a judgment call (usually due to the safety car):

Bottas over Hamilton -- You can argue about whether Lewis would have won anyway, but I think Bottas deserves some votes for being the car who was actually ahead.
Grosjean over Magnussen -- Both Haas cars were terrible, but I blame KMag for the crash.
Norris over Sainz -- Much better in qualifying, and unlucky to lose out in the safety car lottery due to a missed call by his team.
Albon over Kvyat -- Was on course to beat his teammate before his engine started acting up, so he gets my vote.

Think I agree with all of these. Many are fed up with me discussing Bottas and Hamilton, but I certainly don't disagree with Hamilton getting the majority of votes now i know about the strategy options decided by them.

But regarding the whole weekend, Bottas looked on it on Friday and did what mattered on Saturday too. Those who mentioned Hamilton has been having good starts recently, I think he had another, but Bottas kept ahead. He put in quite possibly his strongest move on Hamilton in his career on lap 4. Extremely determined to keep him behind. It was certainly the safety car that resulted in Hamilton being ahead for the vast majority of the race though. And this did stop us seeing more of Bottas defending further. There is no doubt that Hamilton was faster. But I doubt Hamilton will have found a way past in the 2nd stint either. It only will have been a free pass by making his strategy work.

Hamilton's speed on race day was his only stand out of this weekend really. He messed up in qualifying, although only resulting in being behind Bottas my a tiny margin. In the race, he couldn't make his overtake stick and got ahead by safety car. This allowed us to see more of his speed that we likely won't have seen at this stage if it wasn't for the safety car getting him out ahead of Bottas. Given he will have come out behind Bottas without the safety car, even if he held back from Bottas to look after his tyres, I'm not convinced he will have been able to set fastest lap then.

It was close between them in terms of a weekend performance, but I'm not sure which one I would vote for.

JU,
Always happy to see the latest version of this thread pop up after a race. Thanks for doing it.

Funny how Stroll has less votes than Perez. A lot of it surely must be people not voting him because he is considered really bad by most. Perez climbed to 15th in Q1. 0.013 slower and he won't have gone through. And also consider, he was 0.113 quicker than Stroll. For all that Stroll gets criticized, that was not much of a margin between them. He then qualified last in Q2. Further behind the next driver up than Stroll was behind him in the previous session. And also in fact had a slower time than Stroll last time out too.

Onto the race. To start with, I'd say Stroll looked decent again. He looked to have pretty much the same pace as Perez. Despite Perez being in front of Kimi and Stroll behind, Perez was falling back from those ahead and despite Perez not being close to the car ahead, Stroll was keeping in DRS range with Kimi, who also was within DRS of Perez. At this stage, Perez was doing the better job over the weekend in the same way Bottas was over Hamilton. So could understand his votes being like they are based on this stage. But how can i put it? I think Stroll was possibly quicker than Perez? This pattern continued until the safety car with perez continuing to slowly drop back from Sainz. While Kimi and his team mate looked to be as quick or quicker than him.

Stroll pitted first and when Perez pitted, he came out 4 places ahead of Stroll. But there was nothing in it time wise. Perez then soon crashes into Hulkenberg. Before this happened, Stroll was still really close to Perez. Then Perez wrecked his race. He finished 10 seconds behind Kubica with Stroll 45 seconds up ahead!!!

Just baffled how Stroll can't be ahead by a long way this weekend. He wasn't far off Perez all weekend and made no big mistakes either.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

Exediron wrote:A few judgment calls here, largely coming down to how you feel about drivers who 'deserved' to be ahead without the safety car. As always, there are a few obvious ones:

Leclerc over Vettel -- Faster in qualifying, unlucky to ever end up behind Seb due to the safety car, and managed not to plow into the back of Verstappen when they were fighting...
Verstappen over Gasly -- The gap may have been lower due to Gasly actually looking like a credible F1 driver for a change, but Max was still better.
Ricciardo over Hulk -- I don't see any doubt about this one. Ricciardo got screwed over by the safety car and still finished ahead, nearly beating someone who gained from it.
Stroll over Perez -- He managed not to make a horribly inept overtake attempt and ruin his own race.
Raikkonen over Giovinazzi -- Just better.
Russel over Kubica -- Yep.

And the ones that are more of a judgment call (usually due to the safety car):

Bottas over Hamilton -- You can argue about whether Lewis would have won anyway, but I think Bottas deserves some votes for being the car who was actually ahead.
Grosjean over Magnussen -- Both Haas cars were terrible, but I blame KMag for the crash.
Norris over Sainz -- Much better in qualifying, and unlucky to lose out in the safety car lottery due to a missed call by his team.
Albon over Kvyat -- Was on course to beat his teammate before his engine started acting up, so he gets my vote.

Think I agree with all of these. Many are fed up with me discussing Bottas and Hamilton, but I certainly don't disagree with Hamilton getting the majority of votes now i know about the strategy options decided by them.

But regarding the whole weekend, Bottas looked on it on Friday and did what mattered on Saturday too. Those who mentioned Hamilton has been having good starts recently, I think he had another, but Bottas kept ahead. He put in quite possibly his strongest move on Hamilton in his career on lap 4. Extremely determined to keep him behind. It was certainly the safety car that resulted in Hamilton being ahead for the vast majority of the race though. And this did stop us seeing more of Bottas defending further. There is no doubt that Hamilton was faster. But I doubt Hamilton will have found a way past in the 2nd stint either. It only will have been a free pass by making his strategy work.

Hamilton's speed on race day was his only stand out of this weekend really. He messed up in qualifying, although only resulting in being behind Bottas my a tiny margin. In the race, he couldn't make his overtake stick and got ahead by safety car. This allowed us to see more of his speed that we likely won't have seen at this stage if it wasn't for the safety car getting him out ahead of Bottas. Given he will have come out behind Bottas without the safety car, even if he held back from Bottas to look after his tyres, I'm not convinced he will have been able to set fastest lap then.

It was close between them in terms of a weekend performance, but I'm not sure which one I would vote for.

Bottas wouldn't have been defending after Hamilton stopped because Hamilton had no reason to attack, this is why he wouldn't have found a way past either. You dont attack if your one stopping and the car in front is two stopping.

What makes you convinced Hamilton wouldn't have been able to put in fastest lap at the end of the race? In Hamilton's second stint the pace could have been slower because when Bottas put on the faster tyres he didn't even get close to Hamilton.

For me Hamilton is an easy pick this weekend, to stay within a second of your teammate in a Mercedes for around 16 laps is rarely seen and then have better tyre wear and the lap before Hamilton pit he was just a tenth slower than Bottas on fresh mediums. Let's not forget in both stints Bottas could push his mediums as hard as he likes as he knew he was 2 stopping, he could not get away in the first stint and could not get close in the second stint. Hamiltons race pace and tyre management was superb.

F1_Ernie wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

Exediron wrote:A few judgment calls here, largely coming down to how you feel about drivers who 'deserved' to be ahead without the safety car. As always, there are a few obvious ones:

Leclerc over Vettel -- Faster in qualifying, unlucky to ever end up behind Seb due to the safety car, and managed not to plow into the back of Verstappen when they were fighting...
Verstappen over Gasly -- The gap may have been lower due to Gasly actually looking like a credible F1 driver for a change, but Max was still better.
Ricciardo over Hulk -- I don't see any doubt about this one. Ricciardo got screwed over by the safety car and still finished ahead, nearly beating someone who gained from it.
Stroll over Perez -- He managed not to make a horribly inept overtake attempt and ruin his own race.
Raikkonen over Giovinazzi -- Just better.
Russel over Kubica -- Yep.

And the ones that are more of a judgment call (usually due to the safety car):

Bottas over Hamilton -- You can argue about whether Lewis would have won anyway, but I think Bottas deserves some votes for being the car who was actually ahead.
Grosjean over Magnussen -- Both Haas cars were terrible, but I blame KMag for the crash.
Norris over Sainz -- Much better in qualifying, and unlucky to lose out in the safety car lottery due to a missed call by his team.
Albon over Kvyat -- Was on course to beat his teammate before his engine started acting up, so he gets my vote.

Think I agree with all of these. Many are fed up with me discussing Bottas and Hamilton, but I certainly don't disagree with Hamilton getting the majority of votes now i know about the strategy options decided by them.

But regarding the whole weekend, Bottas looked on it on Friday and did what mattered on Saturday too. Those who mentioned Hamilton has been having good starts recently, I think he had another, but Bottas kept ahead. He put in quite possibly his strongest move on Hamilton in his career on lap 4. Extremely determined to keep him behind. It was certainly the safety car that resulted in Hamilton being ahead for the vast majority of the race though. And this did stop us seeing more of Bottas defending further. There is no doubt that Hamilton was faster. But I doubt Hamilton will have found a way past in the 2nd stint either. It only will have been a free pass by making his strategy work.

Hamilton's speed on race day was his only stand out of this weekend really. He messed up in qualifying, although only resulting in being behind Bottas my a tiny margin. In the race, he couldn't make his overtake stick and got ahead by safety car. This allowed us to see more of his speed that we likely won't have seen at this stage if it wasn't for the safety car getting him out ahead of Bottas. Given he will have come out behind Bottas without the safety car, even if he held back from Bottas to look after his tyres, I'm not convinced he will have been able to set fastest lap then.

It was close between them in terms of a weekend performance, but I'm not sure which one I would vote for.

Bottas wouldn't have been defending after Hamilton stopped because Hamilton had no reason to attack, this is why he wouldn't have found a way past either. You dont attack if your one stopping and the car in front is two stopping.

What makes you convinced Hamilton wouldn't have been able to put in fastest lap at the end of the race? In Hamilton's second stint the pace could have been slower because when Bottas put on the faster tyres he didn't even get close to Hamilton.

For me Hamilton is an easy pick this weekend, to stay within a second of your teammate in a Mercedes for around 16 laps is rarely seen and then have better tyre wear and the lap before Hamilton pit he was just a tenth slower than Bottas on fresh mediums. Let's not forget in both stints Bottas could push his mediums as hard as he likes as he knew he was 2 stopping, he could not get away in the first stint and could not get close in the second stint. Hamiltons race pace and tyre management was superb.

My wording was that I'm not convinced that he would have. Can't be totally sure. I'm not 100% denying it...

Even though he will have gone slower if behind Bottas, I think being behind him that long will have reduced his chances of being quite as quick at the end. Surely it will have had at least a small impact on the condition of his tyres? Even though he hadn't been following Bottas, the team still looked like they wanted to pit him. I still think Bottas could have got fastest lap if it wasn't for Hamilton doing it on the very last lap. But this was smart thinking by Hamilton. Bottas looked quicker when he set fastest lap, then looked to back off. Probably because he assumed it wouldn't be possible for Hamilton to beat it. And he had no need to push as he had no chance to catch right up to Hamilton. I think this lap by Hamilton caught Bottas out by surprise and he would have responded had it been a lap or two before. At this stage, he had no need to push hard on a used set of the softest tyres.