Bottas WINS Austrian Grand Prix for Mercedes in rather chaotic race

Valtteri Bottas wins the Austrian Grand Prix in a chaotic race which saw nine of the 20 cars fail to finish. Lewis Hamilton second.

On the face of it, the result of the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix as the race finished was much as you’d expect, with Bottas taking the win from pole and Hamilton taking a close second place. But it was far from that simple.

For a start, Hamilton got a five-second penalty for an incident which put Red Bull’s Albon out of the race in the closing stages as he passed Hamilton for second place, and that penalty dropped Hamilton from second to fourth, having already got a grid penalty which took him from second on the grid to fifth. It wasn’t Hamilton’s weekend.

That penalty also promoted Ferrari’s Leclerc in to second place, and gave McLaren’s Lando Norris third place and a spot on the podium. A remarkable achievement even in a race where almost half the cars retired as F1 seemed to suffer the same reliability problems thousands of ordinary motorists have after lockdown.

But Mercedes really had no such problems – apart from Hamilton’s coming together with Albon – and Bottas led the race from start to finish.

Behind the top four of Bottas, Leclerc, Norris and Hamilton, McLaren’s Sainz took fifth, Perez in the Racing Point sixth, Gasly in the Honda seventh, Ocon in the Renault eighth, Giovinazzi in the Alfa ninth and poor old Vettel a lowly 10th. Nicholas Latifi was the final finisher for Williams in 11th.