The 2019 Austrian Grand Prix began badly for Max Verstappen and ended with Red Bull, Honda and half the grandstands behaving as if the sport had been plugged back in. On 30 June at the Red Bull Ring, Verstappen recovered from a poor start, chased down Charles Leclerc and passed the Ferrari two laps from the finish to win.
Leclerc had started from pole and looked set for his first Formula 1 victory. Verstappen started alongside him but bogged down badly, dropping into the pack and turning a front-row opportunity into a recovery job. The first phase of the race belonged to Ferrari. The final phase belonged to Verstappen’s Red Bull-Honda, which came alive as the tyres and fuel load came toward him.
Turn 3, lap 69
The decisive move came at Turn 3 on lap 69 of 71. Verstappen attacked on the inside, Leclerc held on around the outside, and the two cars touched as the Ferrari ran wide. It was hard racing, and it was immediately examined by the stewards. After a delay, no further action was taken, confirming Verstappen as the winner ahead of Leclerc and Valtteri Bottas.
The decision mattered, but the larger result mattered more. It was Honda’s first Formula 1 win since Jenson Button’s 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix, and its first of the Red Bull partnership that had started that season. After the bruising McLaren-Honda years, the sight of a Honda-powered car winning on merit carried extra weight. Honda had not simply returned to the front; it had done so with Red Bull, at Red Bull’s home race, through an aggressive late pass by the driver around whom the team was building its future.
For Leclerc, Austria was another near miss after Bahrain, where mechanical trouble had taken away a likely first win. His first victory would come later in 2019, but Spielberg delayed it in the most public way possible. For Verstappen, the race strengthened his reputation as the driver most likely to interrupt Mercedes control whenever Red Bull gave him enough car.
The 2019 Austrian Grand Prix did not decide a championship. It changed the emotional temperature of the season. Mercedes’ winning run ended, Honda had a proper victory again, and Verstappen had turned a ruined start into one of the defining drives of his early Red Bull-Honda years.
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