Valtteri Bottas has survived an Austrian Grand Prix of high attrition to claim the first win of the 2020 Formula One season.
The Finn led every lap, but his race was far from easy. The grand prix featured three safety car interventions and only 11 finishers at the chequered flag, and Bottas had to manage âcriticalâ gearbox issues that prevented him from exploiting the full performance of his car.
He also had to absorb pressure from teammate Lewis Hamilton in the middle part of the race, though the Britonâs threat faded a little past half distance after becoming afflicted with similar reliability problems.
Valtteri Bottas will lead Lewis Hamilton on an all-Mercedes front row after the Silver Arrows dominated qualifying at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Mercedes had things all its own way at Spielberg with a more than half-second advantage over Red Bull Racing, but it was Ferrariâs lack of performance that shocked most after the Italian team lost Sebastian Vettel in Q2 and Charles Leclerc qualified a lowly seventh.
The battle for pole was a private affair between Bottas and Hamilton, with the Finn taking a 0.122-second upper hand after the pairâs first laps.
Formula One isnât the first sport to resume from coronavirus-induced hiatus, but its 15-race, four-continent plan to return to business certainly makes it the most ambitious.
This weekendâs Austrian Grand Prix (5 July), the first of three races in a row, will mark the beginning of a racing schedule of unprecedented intensity. Eight European races are crammed into 10 weeks, and while the sport is yet to confirm the composition of its next tranche of events, its intention is to travel to Eurasia, Asia and the Americas before concluding with three grands prix in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi in December.
F1 is existentially wed to its international footprint. Its âworld championshipâ designation is dependent on the series traversing at least three continents, forcing it into a painful logistical challenge in a time of unpredictable border closures and lengthy quarantine times.
Formula One gambled and lost on trying to start its 2020 season amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic, but its handling of a potential outbreak has called into question the judgement of those running the sport at its highest levels.
The appearance of the highly contagious COVID-19 virus inside the paddock was inevitable for a sport that was due to travel to 22 countries this year. The amount of international transit puts those working in Formula One among the most at risk of contracting the disease, and the confined working environment of each circuit is ideal for rapid transmission.
It was always a matter of when, not if.
Never before has a Formula One season opened to such a plethora of unknowns heading into the first round of the season.
Six days of preseason testing revealed few concrete answers to consider in the weeks leading to the Australian Grand Prix.
Mercedes, the reigning six-time constructors champion, was quickest, but the German marque was uncharacteristically unreliable. Power unit problems plagued not only the works team across both three-day sessions but customer Williams too, which endured three frustrating stoppages.