F1: Verstappen Dominates Yet Again In Austria As Norris Finishes Ahead Of Hamilton

Max Verstappen put out yet another dominating performance as Red Bull won its fifth consecutive race in the 2021 F1 world championship. Verstappen imposed himself early on in the race fending off Norris who was soon overtaken by Hamilton. As it happened, Hamilton started struggling with some damage and tyre degradation which resulted in Bottas also overtaking him. Hamilton's struggles were so fierce that Norris also overtook him to finish in P3 enabling McLaren to extend its lead over Ferrari in the constructor's championship. 

Sergio Perez lost out early in the race as he went off while attempting to overtake Norris to take P2. Norris got a 5-second penalty for this, but Perez lost out so much that he found himself just ahead of Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari. While they both exchanged positions for a while Perez managed to stay ahead, but in the process also managed to get two 5-second time penalties which meant he finished behind Carlos Sainz Jr in P6. 

Leclerc finished in P8 as he was mostly stuck behind Ricciardo and Perez through the race

Sainz raced brilliantly perfectly executing a single pit stop strategy taking the hard tyre to the 49th lap of the race. In the cut back after the pitstops on faster medium tyres, he overtook Tsunoda, Leclerc and Ricciardo. He got the jump on Perez by way of the Mexican's penalties. Leclerc managed a lonely P8 not managing to overhaul Ricciardo who had one of his best races of 2021 season in P7. 

Pierre Gasly finished in a decent P9 ahead of Fernando Alonso who also managed to get into the points in P10, overtaking George Russell in the dying moments of the race. Tsunoda in the second AlphaTauri was in P12. Lance Stroll finished in P13 in the Aston Martin ahead of his teammate Sebastian Vettel who crashed with Kimi Raikkonen in the last lap of the race. The two finished P17 and P16. 

Latifi in the second Williams and Giovinazzi in the other Alfa Romeo finished in P15 and P14. Mick Schumacher in the Haas finished in an expected P18 ahead of team-mate Nikita Mazepin. The only person who didn't finish the race was Esteban Ocon in the Alpine who retired because of a racing incident in the first lap. 

Austrian Grand Prix classification:
 
1 Max Verstappen
2 Valtteri Bottas
3 Lando Norris
4 Lewis Hamilton
5 Carlos Sainz
6 Sergio Perez
7 Daniel Ricciardo
8 Charles Leclerc
9 Pierre Gasly
10 Fernando Alonso
11 George Russell
12 Yuki Tsunoda
13 Lance Stroll
14 Antonio Giovinazzi
15 Nicholas Latifi
16 Kimi Raikkonen
17 Sebastian Vettel
18 Mick Schumacher
19 Nikita Mazepin

R Esteban Ocon