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Max Verstappen extended his lead in the 2023 F1 championship standings this weekend at the Red Bull Racing Ring, taking his fifth consecutive win at the Austrian GP. He maximized his points, having won the sprint race as well as the main race, and now has a whopping 81-point advantage over his teammate Sergio Perez, who is second in the standings.
Red Bull F1 team boss Christian Horner praised Verstappen and the rest of the team, emphasizing that he hopes that they are able to maintain this level of consistency for the rest of the season. In a post-race media interaction, the Brit told Sky Sports:
"He's in incredible form. The team is operating at such a high level. That now matches our best in-season run of results, so an incredible performance. We just want to keep it going."
Red Bull had a near-perfect weekend at their home Grand Prix, with Sergio Perez finishing in P3, behind the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. The Mexican started the race from P15, having had a tough qualifying session on Friday, but managed to make a strong recovery by the end of the session, strengthening his position in the standings.
Ferrari seem to be gaining some consistency with strong points in the bag for the team this weekend. Charles Leclerc secured Ferrari's 800th F1 podium with a P2 finish today. With this, the Monegasque pushed himself up to sixth in the standings, two points ahead of George Russell, who finished the race in P8. Carlos Sainz finished just outside the top 3 in P4, although the Spaniard was quite frustrated with the strategy employed by the team this weekend.
Describing his race and drive to P4, Sainz said:
“The gap went from four-tenths because I was on (Charles') gearbox to six or seven seconds and three positions lost in that first pit stop. I feel I played the team game, staying behind and to be penalised in the way I was with the pit stop, losing a lot of time and losing the three positions and six seconds with the VSC ending when we could have done something differently frustrated me."
He added:
"I lost a lot of time, trying to recover which I did pretty quickly the gap and the time I got the track limits and from there my race was quite compromised."
Mercedes showed relatively less pace in Spielberg than they have in the past few races, while Lando Norris had arguably one of his most competitive weekends of the 2023 F1 season so far. The Brit finished the race in the top 5 and now lays in the top ten of the drivers' standings, although his team-mate Oscar Piastri finished outside the top 10.
2023 F1 Driver Standings after the Austrian GP
