Who was the most unfortunate driver at the Austrian GP? — What you missed

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Fernando Alonso couldn't get a break, stewards doled out fines, Nicholas Latifi suffered in lonely misery, and Ferrari ended the 2022 Austrian GP with mixed emotions? A string of woe that you may have missed

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Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) takes the chequered flag to win the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix in front of Max Verstappen (Red Bull-Honda) at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. Photo: Grand Prix Photo

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The short lap and plentiful overtaking opportunities at the Red Bull Ring meant that the action at the Austrian Grand Prix was frenetic.

Charles Leclerc passed Verstappen three times at the front, while the midfield battle provided historic images of five cars fighting in a single corner.

And then, when the race seemed settled, Ferrari added a dose of fiery jeopardy with Sainz’s car engulfed in flames and then Leclerc’s throttle staying partly on when he lifted off.

Even his team principal had to stop watching.

There was more going on amid the drama as well, with penalties galore and seemingly endless misery and misfortune for Nicholas Latifi and Fernando Alonso

Here is what you might have missed from the 2022 Austrian GP.

 

When the drama got too much for Mattia Binotto

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It could easily have been more misery for Leclerc in Austria

Sainz’s engine implosion was a disaster for Ferrari, which had looked set for a 1-2 finish. To have Leclerc retire would have been unthinkable. But that was the scenario facing the team with 10 laps to go, as a panicky Leclerc reported throttle trouble.

A mechanical issue left the throttle up to 30% open when Leclerc was braking, forcing him to lift and coast on the approach to corners so he’d know how much the throttle was going to stick, losing time when the gap to Verstappen behind was just 3.5sec.

“[It was very] stressful!” said Leclerc. “The throttle was really inconsistent and in the middle of the corner it would get stuck to whatever percentage, so in Turn 3 it was very, very tricky because that’s where you don’t want any more speed in mid-corner.”

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Sitting powerless on the pitwall was team principal Binotto who, having seen Sainz retire and witnessed more than a few Ferrari issues this year, couldn’t take the tension.

“I stopped watching the race at that time,” he said. “I was not [even looking at the timing screens]. [I was] looking around,” he said.

The team is still investigating the cause of the issue. “On the initial feedback, it’s more a mechanical one we got, but I cannot give you more details than that,” said Binott.

 

Post-race trouble for the podium finishers 

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The podium finishers joined Sebastian Vettel in receiving suspended fines over the Austrian GP weekend

There were 43 offences recorded for exceeding track limits during the race and the stewards didn’t stop when the chequered flag was waved.

All of the top three were given suspended €10,000 fines because their physios had joined them in parc fermé before they were weighed, in breach of the procedure for the race.

For that, they can blame Michael Schumacher, whose ‘heavy crash helmet’ contributed to the pre-weighing restrictions.

In 1995, when the minimum weight limit was changed to include car and driver, Schumacher’s weight was found to have ballooned from 69kg the year before to 77kg ahead of the season-opening Brazilian GP.

At that time, it wasn’t clear that drivers would be weighed after the race as well. When race-winner Schumacher stepped onto the scales, he was found to be 71.5kg — still within the legal limit — and seemingly holding a lucrative secret to instant weight loss.

When quizzed, the then Benetton driver attributed the difference to his heavier training crash helmet and drinking lots of water.

Since then, officials have tightened post-race rules to prevent drivers being handed anything heavy that could skew the scales.

 

Fernando Alonso wins the hardest-earned point of the weekend

Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso’s car failing to start in the sprint race cost him the P8 grid spot he earned in Friday’s qualifying

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Fernando Alonso offered a lesson in perseverance at the Red Bull Ring, clearing obstacle after obstacle to score a point for tenth.

That’s a respectable enough result after he started from the back of the grid, but the two-time world champion he was clearly gutted after the race, knowing he could have done better.

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Alonso and Alpine came into the weekend confident of a strong performance and saved all their soft tyres during the first practice session so they could blitz qualifying and the team was clear of midfield rivals McLaren, with Ocon starting the sprint race fifth and Alonso eighth on the grid.

But eighth on the grid Alonso remained when his car wouldn’t start for the formation lap and he was wheeled into the pits, not to re-emerge that afternoon.

It put him to the back of the grid for the Grand Prix, where he was poised to deliver one of his trademark charges. By lap 18 he was in the top ten and battling in the five-car fight. On lap 33, he was wagging his finger at Yuki Tsunoda for squeezing him off the track as he went past.

And he looked to be finally in luck when Carlos Sainz’s flaming Ferrari triggered a virtual safety car. Having only used hard tyres up to that point, it reduced the time loss for his final pitstop to fit another compound (medium) as required.

That dropped him from seventh to ninth — with fresher rubber and within striking distance of Norris and Magnussen ahead. But nothing would run smoothly at the Red Bull Ring. He felt huge vibrations on the new tyres and had to stop again, tumbling down to 14th.

Despite still scraping a point, Alonso was left rueing the race. “We could have been P6, P7,” said Alonso over team radio. “Speechless man, so difficult to understand many things this season.”

 

Further misery for Nicholas Latifi

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Nicholas Latifi is the only driver with a seat for the entire 2022 season, to not have scored a point yet

Latifi is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment.

He is yet to score points this season, while racing with an old-spec car despite new updates being fitted to Alex Albon’s machinery.

In Austria the difference between the two specs was clear because Albon was fighting with the rest of the pack on the periphery of points, while Latifi had quite an invisible race.

It only lasted 48 laps and he was running massively off the pace until Williams took the decision to retire him.

“I can’t turn the car in turn nine, it’s massively damaged,” said Latifi over team radio. “We’re running three seconds off the pace here, it’s the right-hand corners which are way worse than the left.”

He explained that his problems dated back to the start of the grand prix. “We sustained floor damage from running over some debris at the start of the race and I ran wide on one kerb,” he said.

“Towards the end of the first stint I could feel the balance getting worse, beginning of the second stint there was a lack of downforce and pace.

“The decision was to retire the car to save the engine mileage.”