Will anything change for race two in Austria?

Formula 1 is about to host back-to-back races at the same circuit for the first time in its history, and with that comes some trepidation about what – if anything, might change.

Unless you’re Red Bull or Lewis Hamilton, you probably don’t want that much to be different. Certainly as fans we would all love to see a repeat of the thrilling race we got on Sunday, but is it likely?

Leaving aside the weather – with the potential for rain and a mixed-up grid in qualifying – there are plenty of variables that could certainly shake up the order this weekend.

Let’s start with the teams at the front.

Mercedes looked like it would cruise to a one-two in the early part of Sunday’s race, but even before the numerous Safety Car interruptions that allowed Alex Albon to challenge, the team was facing a gearbox issue. Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin told F1 it’s currently an inherent problem that won’t be a quick fix.

“On Friday you saw that Valtteri had an issue at the end of one of the sessions so that was first a sign that we had a problem, we’ve had recurrence issues over the course of Saturday and going into the race we were expecting it because it seems to be a feature of the model,” Shovlin said. “So, at the moment if we build the car and run it this problem will appear at some point – it’s just a question of how soon.

“It’s not manifesting itself as one thing … it’s basically a build-up of electrical noise that starts to interfere with the various systems so with Valtteri we saw that halfway through the race, got progressively worse, with Lewis it appeared later. But it’s electrical noise that’s then affecting a lot of different things.”

Team principal Toto Wolff was more confident that his team would be able to address the issues to some extent, but it wasn’t just because it was the first race of the season that we saw teams having problems.

“Reliability issues come from the kerbs, it’s a great track but if you run the kerbs too wide which is within the rules, you damage the suspension,” Wolff said. “By nature the drivers want to go as quick as possible, but by doing that you risk the suspension, damage or vibrations to the car and break it.”

That’s something that Shovlin echoes, as he believes holding two races at the Red Bull Ring poses a much bigger challenge than the usual season-openers that teams are dealing with.

“Austria’s just a really horrible circuit for the cars,” Shovlin said. “Normally you start the season somewhere like Melbourne, and Melbourne’s a track where it’s very difficult to overtake, and when it’s difficult to overtake you can then afford to look after your car and people aren’t going to get by.

“This is a circuit where it’s quite easy to overtake and as a result if you don’t use the kerbs, if you don’t push hard, you’re at risk. That’s one of the factors, but it’s the kerbs themselves that are very, very violent and you spend a lot of the lap running on them. For us, that was that issue and it probably doesn’t help that it’s nearly 30 degrees here, the air’s a bit thin so it’s hot, there isn’t as much cooling as you normally get, and all the temperatures inside the car are high.

“But every year this is a race of attrition and having it as the first race and then having two of them, one after the other (will be tough) because we think we can make some strides to improve some of our problems but others aren’t going to get better on the same track.

“So a lot of people know you’ve got another dose of it coming up, so it’s a race against time to try and make a bit of headway into those complications.”