09/07/2017
NEWS STORY
Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas won his second race of the season with a one-stop strategy at the Red Bull Ring, having started from pole on the ultrasoft and then switching to the supersoft.
A number of different one-stop strategies were tried, with all three nominated compounds (soft, supersoft and ultrasoft) seen on the starting grid. In particular, Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton started from P8 due to a grid penalty and moved from the supersoft to the ultrasoft to make up four places by the end of the race. Both Felipe Massa, driving for Williams, and Renault's Jolyon Palmer adopted an alternative strategy by starting on soft and going onto ultrasoft, to also make up a few places from their grid positions.
With a short lap featuring very few corners and none of the expected rain, the fastest average lap speeds of the entire season so far were seen in Austria this weekend. This was one of the factors that led to some visible blistering in some moments of the race; however, this did not impact on performance as it was seen by their lap times.
Mario Isola: "With some very fast average speeds and no rain, there was a bit of blistering but this did not affect performance - with the fastest laps being set at the end of the race. Although one stop was the standard choice, there were many different variations on the one-stop strategy, with a few drivers trying something different to make up places. On the whole, the strategy options were quite aggressive throughout the field, with some long runs even on the ultrasoft. This underlines the confidence that the teams have both in the speed and durability of the tyre range."
Truthometer
Valtteri Bottas won the race using one pit stop, going from ultrasoft to supersoft on lap 42. The theoretically fastest strategy was adopted by Lewis Hamilton, who started on supersoft then moved to ultrasoft.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spielberg, here.