SPIELBERG, Austria (AP) — Returning to Red Bull’s home track where he’s had some “pretty crazy” victories, Formula One leader Max Verstappen is striving for his season-best fourth win at the Styrian Grand Prix.
If victory — crazy or not — doesn’t come on Sunday, he will still have 15 more chances to get it in 2021.
His chances are good this weekend, though. The Dutch driver is proving that he and Red Bull this season are more than just hunters of Mercedes, the dominating force in F1 for seven years.
“Before, we didn’t have the car to fight them,” Verstappen said on Thursday. “You could do what you want, I mean, make it three stops and put the rear tires on the front, nothing was going to change.
“Now we have the car to really fight them.”
Last week in Le Castellet, Verstappen snatched victory from Lewis Hamilton, overtaking his Mercedes rival and seven-time champion on the penultimate lap of the French GP.
“It was a very important win because it was on a track where, before, we were not very competitive,” Verstappen said. “So, to turn it around like that with a very competitive car was very rewarding and a big boost to the team.”
His 13 career wins include two at the track of Sunday’s race in the Austrian Alps, in 2018 and 2019.
“Those two stand out. They were pretty crazy, with the fans around and so much orange,” said Verstappen, referring to tens of thousands of Dutch fans who travelled to the race in Austria those years.
From the seven races so far, Red Bull has won four. Verstappen also triumphed in Monza and Monaco, and his teammate, Sergio Perez, won in Azerbaijan, where leader Verstappen seemed heading for victory until a tire blowout five laps from the finish.
The remaining three races were Hamilton’s.
The defending champion, who trails Verstappen by 12 points in the standings, won the Styrian GP in 2020, and teammate Valtteri Bottas won the Austrian GP the following week.
Repeating that feat seems a tough ask for Mercedes.
“We know how strong they are,” Hamilton said about Red Bull. “They have obviously got three long straights here. You see how much time they are taking out of us in the last race. It could be the same here.”
The Styrian GP was initially intended as a one-off event when it was added in 2020 after the F1 schedule was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, it returned to the calendar again to make up for the canceled Turkish GP, which, had been a replacement for the Canadian GP, giving Austria back-to-back races for the second year running.