Valtteri Bottas’s win suggests the champion constructors will be ominously strong again this season and F1 deserves credit for the biosphere system which saw a Covid clear race
Valtteri Bottas’s win in Austria might have been nail-biting for the team, given they feared his car was very close to a shutdown because of a gearbox sensor problem, but from the weekend as a whole Mercedes emerged ominously strong. Their car is comfortably once more at the front of the field, with their form bearing the hallmarks of one of those relentless Metallica riffs that churns on and on and on. Half a second up in qualifying, nearest competitor Red Bull had to opt for an alternate tyre strategy just to give Max Verstappen a shot in the race. Their engine power on the straights is three-tenths up on last year and the chassis is quick and balanced out of the box. An incident-packed race only disguised what is once more the pick of the field by some margin. Worryingly for the opposition, all this on a circuit where Mercedes have struggled in recent years.
Related: Valtteri Bottas wins F1 Austrian Grand Prix after Hamilton suffers penalty
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