2025 Austrian Grand Prix race preview
Welcome to the 2025 Austrian Grand Prix preview. As a reminder of last seasons race, Russell won the race after a late collision between Lando and Max that left Lando out of the race and Max 5th after a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision and a flat tire. Even though Russell won, he was not even close to Max or Lando in the race, I believe he was like 15 seconds behind when the incident happened. Some other notable things during the weekend was that Piastri had good pace all weekend but fell short in qualifying so keep an eye on him this weekend, and Hamilton had decent early race pace until a wide overtake that caused him give the position back to Sainz.
The Austrian GP has 10 corners and 3 DRS zones that allows the race to have a lot of overtakes, mostly in the first 5 corners. Turn 1, 3 and 4 will be the corners to watch for overtakes. Seeing a late lunge at these turns are a staple in the GP and are some of my personal favorite corners on the calendar. This Segways me into my first talking point of the weekend, penalty points, Max is on his last penalty point before a race ban. I wouldn't be surprised if we don’t see Max try any lunges especially in turn 3. We know how strong Max and Redbull are at the Austrian GP so seeing him and the McLarens/Mercedes battling will be interesting. In my opinion, the 2 McLarens will be too strong to compete with this weekend and unless we see another internal wreck, they should dominate this race like in Miami. Again, we can’t count out Max, but even with his pace it will be a challenge.
The other main story of this weekend is: How fast is Mercedes? Mercedes showed some real speed in Canada, and did do well in this race last season, even with being 15 seconds behind. As a Mercedes fan, I would love to see them challenge McLaren and Redbull. I have hope that we will see more speed from this team considering the temperature should be similar to Canada.
If I had to make a very early prediction, I would have Lando, Piastri, and Russell on the podium with Max and Russell being the 2 cars battling for P3. My wildcard winner could be Kimi, this track to me is more simple than others so don’t be shocked if Kimi can put up a challenge.
What chances do you have for a possible Mercedes win?