With Williams locking out the front row for the first time in more than a decade, the question in Austria was two fold: could the British team finally produce a result on race day and would championship leaders Mercedes, third and ninth on the grid, make a vital recovery after losing the previous race in Canada?
The answer to part one depended on your level of expectation. On the one hand, Williams failed to convert such strong starting positions into a win when Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa came home third and fourth. On the other, they took the long-term view and went for a clutch of points to improve their position in the tense mid-table battle with Force India and McLaren.
Williams recognised the fact that Mercedes would be stronger over 71 laps of the Red Bull Ring and ran their race accordingly, refusing to stop earlier than planned simply to cover Mercedes even though Massa had been leading from pole since the start. Practice had shown the Mercedes to have a stronger long-run pace on the harder tyre. Williams knew as well as anyone that Nico Rosberg would be ever-present (he shadowed the Williams duo from the start) and that Lewis Hamilton’s problem in qualifying was not indicative of what he might do in the race.
Hamilton started from ninth after a locking rear brake had pitched the Englishman into a spin at the start of what should have been his best qualifying lap. With Rosberg having a points advantage, it was clear Hamilton would drive the wheels off his Mercedes in order to stay in touch.
Sure enough, a thrusting first lap saw Hamilton finish it in fourth place and begin to close in on the other Mercedes. Less than three seconds covered the first four when Rosberg opened the pit stop sequence on lap 11. Who would respond first?
The answer was Hamilton, a stop lasting 0.9 seconds longer ensuring he would not only remain behind Rosberg but also, crucially, fail to make the undercut on Bottas when the Williams came in two laps later. Massa’s luck, meanwhile, had not improved since Canada. Running ahead, he had taken the option of coming in a lap earlier than Bottas but a marginally slower in lap and stop cost track position in such close company, Massa emerging at the tail of the leading quartet. Now the focus was on how long it would take Hamilton to demote Bottas from second place.
The answer was quite some time. Bottas, continuing to show impressive maturity, managed to defend despite Hamilton being in the DRS zone as the second and final stops beckoned just before three-quarter distance. Once again, Hamilton spent longer in the pits than Rosberg and Bottas, but the two-lap advantage on fresh tyres was just enough to get ahead of the Williams as Bottas emerged from the pits.
At this stage, a Grand Prix was being led for the first time in 2014 by a Ferrari but it was to be short-lived, Fernando Alonso’s eventual final stop dropping him to fifth behind Mercedes and Williams.
Rosberg led Hamilton by 1.5 seconds. There were 24 laps to go. When Rosberg was told: “You’re racing Lewis to the end” and Hamilton was informed: “Your rear tyres are looking better for you [than Nico]”, it was perfectly clear that Mercedes were continuing their commendable policy of allowing their boys to race.
As Rosberg and Hamilton eased away into a tense fight of their own, the fastest lap was actually recorded by Sergio Perez, a brave strategy of a late stop for the softest tyre bringing the Force India from 16th on the grid (including a five-place penalty for the Mexican’s part in the last-lap collision with Massa in Canada) to sixth, Perez relieving Kevin Magnussen’s McLaren of the place with five laps to go.
At the front, Rosberg just managed to keep Hamilton out of the DRS zone. Going into the last lap, Hamilton was finally less than one second behind, but such was the pressure that both drivers made slight mistakes during the final 2.9 miles and the positions stayed the same.
In the championship, Rosberg is now 29 points (just over a victory) ahead. Hamilton’s home Grand Prix at Silverstone is next. Being at home is not necessarily an advantage as Red Bull discovered when Sebastian Vettel retired with engine and electronics trouble and Daniel Ricciardo, the winner in Canada, managed to grab eighth place by putting a brave pass on Nico Hulkenberg on the last lap of the Red Bull Ring. Hamilton is going to require a few of moves like that if he is to stop Rosberg in Britain. Meanwhile, the opposition – now in the shape of the smart white Williams – is continuing to close in.
