Red Bull's untypical issue that cost Verstappen in Austria — GP analysis

Charles Leclerc, having been robbed of four grand prix victories already his season, was understandably nervous as he led the last few laps driving around a throttle problem – and with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull catching him. But, lifting and coasting, requesting the downshifts early to compensate for the delay caused by the throttle not shutting off fully, Leclerc guided his compromised Ferrari to see the chequer still ahead.

Before that, when the car was working properly, he had overtaken the Red Bull three times on track. Which was an unusual pattern for a 2022 race. Around the Red Bull Ring, the Red Bull’s tyre degradation was just too heavy to compete with the Ferrari on the day. Which was curious because the day before, 23 laps on a single set of medium tyres in the Saturday sprint, Verstappen had dominated from pole.

“I expected it to be tough today, but I didn’t expect it to be like this”

“Basically on any tyre I was just struggling a lot for pace after a few laps, just a lot of deg,” said Verstappen afterwards. “It’s something I cannot really explain right now, why it was so high. Because I think normally we are quite okay on the tyres. And I expected it to be tough today, but I didn’t expect it to be like this. So it’s just something we need to analyse and understand why this happened today. But even on a bad day, let’s say an off day, to only lose five points over the whole weekend is I think still good.”

Often this year it has been the Ferrari which has suffered with its tyres when pushed too hard for too long against the Red Bull. But that has invariably been on tracks where the limitation is the front end. This, by contrast, is a rear-limited track – like Bahrain or Monaco. So the usual Ferrari race-day limitation wasn’t in place but that was made more apparent by the Red Bull’s untypical problem – it was just wearing through the rears too fast. The day before, in the sprint, the challenge had been one of thermal degradation of the rears. In the cooler conditions of Sunday and on a surface which had been washed clean by a morning rain shower, that ceased to be a problem. But the wear rate increased – and that seems to have caught the Red Bull out. Because it wasn’t only the Ferrari its deg looked bad against; it had the worst degradation of any car.

Verstappen had set his first dry track pole of the season on Friday (Imola and Canada qualifying were wet). That was perhaps a function of Ferrari’s recent switch to a lower downforce standard rear wing (introduced on Leclerc’s car in Canada) which surrenders a little ultimate lap time in exchange for Red Bull-matching straight-line speed. In the sprint Verstappen set a hard pace from the off – so much so it caught Leclerc by surprise and he abandoned Ferrari’s initial plan to run aggressively in the sprint (after its tyre usage had looked good in Friday practice). Leclerc’s backing off caught team mate Carlos Sainz by surprise and they diced for a few laps, giving Verstappen a break. Leclerc was just coming back at the Red Bull by the end of the sprint’s 23 laps but not in a way which threatened the result.

Leclerc had taken encouragement from that but even he was surprised at how soon he was being held up by Verstappen in the main race. Max had got himself out of the DRS zone by the end of the second lap, but Leclerc was back in that zone a lap later – and past into the lead on the 12th lap. One lap later, as soon as there was a gap to drop into, Red Bull brought Verstappen in for new hard tyres. That was them on a very early two-stop strategy. Ferrari remained nominally on a one-stop with both cars, running 1-2 until their stops 12-13 laps later.