F1 (Round 2): Preview and Starting Grid of the 2020 Formula 1 Pirelli Styrian Grand Prix

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F1 (Round 2): Preview and Starting Grid of the 2020 Formula 1 Pirelli Styrian Grand Prix



               Race starts at 3:10 pm in Austria | 9:10 pm in Malaysia

Just last weekend, the opening round of the 2020 Formula 1 World Championship was run at the Red Bull Ring in Austria and this Sunday, the second round takes place at the same circuit. It’s unusual to have two consecutive rounds at the same location but this is due to the postponement/cancellation of earlier rounds due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, the organizers have to compress the schedule for this season as they try to get up to 18 races run by the end of the year. Ten have already been confirmed to date.

The FIA says that this is the first time that a region’s name has been used for a F1 round but then again, there is the European GP and Europe is also a region, isn’t it? The event also has the name of 2020 Formula 1 Pirelli Styrian Grand Prix, only the 43rd time that a round has had an individual tile. Styria is the region in Austria which the Red Bull Ring is located.

To recap on the previous round, the race was certainly a chaotic one and by the time the chequered flag came out, just 13 cars (of the 20 that started the race) were classified as finishers. It was the lowest number since the 2017 Australian GP when the same number completed the race.

Although the Red Bull Ring is familiar to the teams and drivers, the gap of just a week has meant that there has been limited time to analyze performance and address issue and concerns. It seemed that there were some reliability issues as certain systems in some cars had problems.

*The positions of Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc and Antonio Giovinazzi were changed after they received grid penalties for various offences.*

*Daniel Ricciardo (Renault) crashed during practices but still made it for the qualifying session.*

For the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, the free practice sessions were used to check whether those reliability concerns were fixed. “The team is still looking into that, but I think we have made some progress. We made some good set-up tweaks and I tried to use the learnings from last weekend, in terms of one-lap pace and driving style over a race distance,” said the winner of the first round, Valtteri Bottas.

*The Official F1 Medical Car assessing track conditions during the heavy rain that delayed qualifying.*

Heavy rain forced the final practice session to be cancelled and today’s qualifying sessions could not start on time due to the same climatic issue. Eventually, the cars went out on wet tyres after a 45-minute wait.

In the Constructors’ battle, Bottas’ win and Lewis Hamilton’s fourth place last weekend put Mercedes-AMG in the familiar position at the top. They have an 11-point lead over McLaren which was the combination of points for the third place of Lando Norris and fifth place of Carlos Sainz, Jr. Ferrari struggled but still collected 19 points with the second placing of Charles Leclerc, plus 1 point from Vettel.