Austrian and British GP review: 2 weekends, 3 races and 5 key points
Formula 1 is finally in its European leg, which means back-to-back races with little time for form or fortunes to turn around. After another breathless doubleheader that culminated in a dramatic race at the sport’s spiritual birthplace of Silverstone, F1 leaves drivers, teams and fans with plenty of food for thought from the Austrian and British race weekends.
1) Mercedes can throw away the title
The W17 is undoubtedly the class of the field when it comes to outright speed, but it also proves notoriously fragile when it comes to finishing a race. So far this season, the Silver Arrows have lost a staggering 68 points due to DNFs alone (20% of their total points this year). While this deficit does not yet actively threaten their position at the top of the Constructors’ Cup, their drivers are feeling the heat. A combination of mechanical and operational problems resulted in Austria being the only race in the final five rounds where both drivers finished in the points, which is amazing for a car that deserved to finish on the podium, if not win every race.
As a result, both Kimi Antonelli and George Russell found Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton breathing down their necks, with their lead now down to 32 and just seven points. For now, their car advantage may still allow Mercedes breathing room, but with 60% of the season still to come, there’s no telling when one of their rivals will make a huge leap in car development that erases their advantage. If that happens, the eight-time world champions may regret those 68 points lost.
2) Is Ferrari ready to become a Challenger?
While Mercedes can take solace from recent history as dominant champions, Ferrari have a storming track record as challengers, forget champions, which they haven’t been in for two decades. Still, after winning two of the last three races, the Italian team find themselves in a real push for the championship thanks to a combination of aggressive car updates, Mercedes’ aforementioned reliability issues and the sheer skill of the most talented drivers on the grid.
But winning the championship requires flawless execution of race weekends, a skill that has sadly eluded Maranello since the glory years of Michael Schumacher. The team made a setup mess during the Austrian GP which resulted in both riders suffering severe tire degradation. While Charles Leclerc benefited from Antonelli’s woes to win the British GP, it was still a bittersweet weekend for Ferrari as a strategic gamble with Lewis Hamilton backfired during a late Safety Car, allowing George Russell to grab second place and deny the team a 1-2.
Then there’s the tricky prospect of potentially favoring one of its drivers. Max Verstappen showed last year that a driver with his team focused solely on him can come within an inch of upsetting a dominant team split between two title contenders. Hamilton fans are already calling for Ferrari to back the seven-time world champion, who is now just 32 points off the championship lead. But will Ferrari ever agree to sacrifice Leclerc, the homegrown prodigy who many tifosi hoped would restore Maranello to glory, even if it is for the greater good?
3) Is Max done with Red Bull?
For a driver who many still believe has the best control of the car on the grid, Max Verstappen’s form book has been littered with a number of uncharacteristic crashes this season, including over the past two weekends (during qualifying in Austria and during the main event at Silverstone when he was aiming for the podium). However, the blame for these crashes lies not with the Red Bull driver, but with the car itself, with the RB22’s aero package proving notoriously unpredictable. The dip in reliability came just as the car was finally showing encouraging flashes of pace, tantalizingly teasing Verstappen with front-wheel defensive tools, but then it all literally fell apart.
As pundits predict, the lack of reliability will eventually force Verstappen to second-guess every move he makes, a curse for a driver whose greatest strength has always been racing at the absolute limit, lap after lap. Unsurprisingly, Verstappen cut a forlorn figure after the race and made his frustrations clear both in interviews and on social media, again fueling speculation about his future. Images of his father and manager in a heated discussion with Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies have only fueled rumors that the Dutchman may finally be on his way out of the Red Bull family.
But where? Mercedes and McLaren, despite courting him with varying degrees of interest in recent months, have both strongly indicated they have no intention of changing their driver line-ups. Verstappen thus has no obvious route to another leading team. Will mounting frustration eventually force the four-time world champion to leave Formula 1, at least temporarily? The threat has never seemed more real.
4) Creating a new human champion
It is often said in the Formula 1 paddock that a champion begins to be truly loved not when he dominates the field, but when he faces adversity on his way back to the top. It’s easy to attribute young Kimi Antonelli’s remarkable performances this year to the dominance of his Mercedes, but that would be doing a disservice to the visible improvement of his race car on a race-by-race basis. His overtaking moves are no longer kamikaze, his qualifying form is remarkably consistent and the race starts that often plagued him earlier in the year are much cleaner.
But Silverstone also showed glimpses into the 19-year-old’s mentality, which can only be described as that of a champion. Antonelli took advantage of an unusually late pit stop to get within three seconds of leading Leclerc when disaster struck his front wheel protector. Two unfortunate pit stops didn’t quite solve the problem and the Italian dropped to 10th, driving a car that refused to turn. Far more seasoned drivers than him would have been tempted to give up and withdraw from the race, but Antonelli insisted on persevering in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to salvage the last championship point awarded in the race. Losing 25 championship points at Silverstone, on top of the 18 he lost in Barcelona two races ago, is a tough pill to swallow for anyone. But Mercedes’ teenage prodigy, who probably remains the fastest driver in form at the moment, seems to be handling it with remarkable composure and maturity.
Last year, Max Verstappen’s heroic comeback to come heart-poundingly close to a fifth world title earned him the nickname “the people’s champion” from fans. Hearing Antonelli on the radio begging his team to race for 10th placed him in the fans’ minds as a potential champion this year.
5) FIA please don’t destroy F1
Almost five years on, Abu Dhabi 2021 remains a blot on the annals of F1 history. What should have been a fitting end to one of the greatest championship showdowns the sport has ever seen, and a passing of the torch moment between two of its greats, became (and remains) a flashpoint at best for incompetence and at worst for accusations of bias and racism, thanks to the controversial handling of the Safety Car in the final laps of the race. The last thing the British GP needed was an anticlimactic return to this race, as if to remind everyone that the FIA remains as competent as ever when it comes to ruining a dramatic finish for fans.
Ironically, the FIA took a volley of abuse at the end of Silverstone 2026 for doing the exact opposite of Abu Dhabi 2021, sticking to the rules to the letter and ordering the Safety Car to only return to the pits a lap after all the cars caught had completed a lap, even if it meant finishing the race under Safety Car conditions. However, what particularly angered fans was the bait-and-switch news that the Safety Car was seemingly coming at the end of the penultimate lap, raising the exciting prospect of a final lap run for glory, only for the news to be canceled moments later. The “software bug” explanation found few interested parties. If drivers can’t cite software glitches as mitigation for mistakes like the false start that incidentally earned Hamilton a five-second penalty, why should the governing body be held to a lower standard?
Even more annoyingly for the FIA, Silverstone has once again dragged Abu Dhabi 2021 back into the conversation. If the rules had to be followed to the letter this time, why were they interpreted so differently then? Formula 1 cannot repeat the same controversy every time the Safety Car procedure is discussed. Five years on, it remains as much an indictment of the FIA as a reminder of one of the sport’s most contentious nights.
– The end
Issued by:
Kingshuk Kusari
Published on:
08 Jul 2026 19:40 IST