It is great to finally see the Austrian Grand Prix make a return to Formula One after being gone for a decade. This should be a great race at a track that I like to call “The Whale” because if its shape.
We may see some issues in turn 1 because the drivers need to leave the track and drive on the extra space on the exit of the turn. This is where we could see the Mercedes duo get dangerously close to try to get the advantage over each other, especially after watching the Mercedes perfect season fly out the window in Canada. Of course, this being Niki Lauda’s home Grand Prix, he is most certainly going to put a lot of pressure on the pair.
Without a doubt Red Bull needs to finish well in this race, what with this being the team’s home Grand Prix and the team owning the track. Because of the speed difference between the Renault and Mercedes engines, we will more than likely see Mercedes run away with the top two positions. Of course, as long as there are no issues like the ones in Canada. And speed will be important because this track is full of long, relatively flat straight aways and has the shortest lap times out of all of the races on the 2014 calendar.
I was astonished to see both Williams cars filling the front row of the grid. Of course this shouldn’t be a surprise because we did see both drivers in the top ten for all of the Free Practice sessions and over the course of the sessions, they had managed to improve their laps times to get into the top three positions.
I think it is also interesting to see that the Toro Rosso car of Daniil Kvyat did so well so far this weekend. He is starting seventh on the grid and I think that we should be able to see him in the top five, as long as there are no accidents.
This will without a doubt be a great race. I can’t wait to see if Mercedes will dominate once again or if we will see the rise of the Williams car.
1 Nico Rosberg
2 Valtteri Bottas
3 Daniel Ricciardo
4 Felipe Massa
5 Daniil Kvyat
