F1: Max Verstappen Earns Fifth Win in Row at Austrian Grand Prix

Austrian Grand Prix

Going, Going, Gone? Verstappen Wins Fifth Straight Race.

Verstappen extended his winning streak and widened his points lead. Is his third straight Formula 1 title only a matter of time?

Credit...Bernadett Szabo/Reuters

He might oversleep one Sunday. He might take his Red Bull racecar to the mall and forget where he parked it. Or lose the keys. He might run into the worst run of bad luck in Formula 1 history.

Barring those possibilities, however, Max Verstappen now seems a safe bet to win his third straight Formula 1 title sometime later this year. He inched ever closer on Sunday at the Austrian Grand Prix with his fifth straight Formula 1 victory, the final cherry on top of a dominant weekend in which he was fastest in practice, fastest in qualifying, first in the sprint race and first on Sunday.

Sunday’s victory in Spielberg, Austria, was Verstappen’s seventh in nine races this year — he was second in the other two. It was marred only by the end of his streak of laps led. Entering Sunday, Verstappen had led every race run in Formula 1 since the May 7 race in Miami. But the streak ended at 249 laps when he exited his first pit stop on Sunday in third place, behind the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

It hardly mattered: Verstappen passed Sainz and then Leclerc in short order, and promptly started a new streak. It has been that kind of year. Verstappen wins. Everyone else, it seems, is now racing for second.

Leclerc was second for Ferrari, a heartening sign for a team whose midseason improvements are bearing fruit. (Leclerc’s teammate, Sainz, was fourth.) And Sergio Pérez was smiling after a great weekend in Austria: He was second to Verstappen in Saturday’s sprint race and third on Sunday, returning to the podium on a day he had started 15th.

“It’s been a bit of a rough stretch for me,” Pérez said, underplaying a run of weeks of frustrating performances. “Now hopefully we are back.”

The Race in Photos

How confident was Verstappen? With two laps left and a 24-second lead, he persuaded his team to let him pit for fresh tires so he could try to post the day’s fastest lap and claim the extra point that comes with it.

How good is he? It worked.

It was a risky play: A pit stop at Red Bull Ring costs a driver about 20 seconds, and the Ferraris were looming, ready to steal the win, if anything went wrong. But nothing is going wrong for Verstappen and Red Bull these days.

One driver after another was penalized on Sunday for violations of what are called track limits: Essentially, they repeatedly went outside the white lines that mark the edge of the racing surface of the track. It got so bad at one point that drivers who had been penalized began snitching on the cars in front of them, telling their teams to report rivals who had gone off the track.

Track limits had been a talking point all weekend after dozens of laps were erased in qualifying on Friday. Those penalties had sent a handful of drivers — notably Pérez — far down the starting grid.

“I think today looked very silly,” Verstappen had said of the qualifying problems on Friday. “It almost looked like we were amateurs out there.”

“People will say, ‘You should have kept the car in the white lines,’” he added. “If it was that easy, you can take my car and try it.”

Red Bull’s team principal, Christian Horner, used a similar word — “amateurish” — after Sunday’s race, and suggested a review of the rules. But track limits taketh, and track limits giveth, too.

Red Bull’s Pérez finished third on Sunday in part because Sainz, who was fourth, had to serve a five-second penalty.

“Great day. I enjoyed it a lot.” — Verstappen, every week.

“Lewis, the car is bad. Please drive it.” — Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, trying to calm Lewis Hamilton’s complaints and focus him on the task at hand.

“I think Friday and today we have maximized what we have, really. It’s good to be back on the podium.” — Leclerc, who stood on it for only the second time this season.

Verstappen’s victory and his cheeky push for the fast lap’s bonus point pushed him 81 points clear of Pérez at the top of the standings. Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin is now an even 100 points back in third.