How reliability overshadowed developments at the Austrian GP

Those who got to the end of the attritional, frenetic Austrian Grand Prix without having their breath taken away must have been watching something else entirely. Even the quieter moments within the race possessed a bubbling undercurrent of intrigue; the gaps on the timing screen and radio orders all contributed to the first Formula 1 race of 2020's final crescendo.

Usually, this is the point where we'd delve into all of the technical upgrades on show over the course of the weekend - and we'll still do that - but ultimately one can argue that the war of marginal gains and shaving away fractions of laptime with aerodynamic additions was not of great importance. 'It's what's inside that counts' was firmly Sunday's mantra.

Perhaps the clue was in the preceding F2 races, which enjoyed their fair share of technical trip-ups - in particular, Giuliano Alesi's mid-race barbecue was a spectacular sight - but there was a catalogue of reliability issues at the big-kid table too as teething troubles reared their ugly heads.

Mercedes senses sensor issues

Mercedes brought some new amendments to its W11 chassis for Austria - more than just the new black paint scheme, which is the face of the team's new efforts to improve the overall diversity within its workforce and make a stand against racism.

The team had brought a new rear-wing endplate to bolster its already-impressive package, shuffling the strakes further forward to create a more gradual transition to bring airflow outwards. In doing that, the car's diffuser has a bigger effective volume as the low pressure zone behind the car - which increases the suction of the floor - is widened.

Mercedes also boasted a new turning vane on the top of the bulkhead and opened out the cooling apertures next to the halo to cover any threat of high temperatures - perhaps burned by last year's Austrian GP in which the team didn't have enough latitude to cool the car in surprisingly hot temperatures and instead had to turn the engines down to counter the pervading heat.

Had Jane Austen written the novel about this race, Sensor and Sensibility would come as the recommended title

But 2020's race brought different issues, and the first indicator was the ailing Racing Point of Lance Stroll. While occupying eighth, Stroll began to lose power and subsequently positions to the chasing Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo. Having pulled into the pits to retire, Stroll's woe - later identified as a sensor issue - was relayed to the Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton with increasing urgency.

Specifically, the gearbox sensor was the one in trouble, and to coax the brace of W11s away from hitting their failsafe mechanisms, Bottas and Hamilton were ordered off the kerbs and told to manage their cars to the finish.

For those F1 fans perpetually irritated by contemporary ultra-reliability, a little bit of jeopardy crept into the equation. Had Jane Austen written the novel about this race, Sensor and Sensibility would come as the recommended title.

Red Bull's unhappy homecoming

Red Bull, too, brought a collection of new parts to its 'home' race at the Red Bull Ring - but Max Verstappen was the only driver to get use of them as Alex Albon was arguably shafted on-and off-track throughout the weekend.

In testing, Red Bull was a team that had made an evident change to its front-end philosophy, making the nose thinner in its geometry to accommodate a "cape" design that improved the front-end downforce and interaction with the front wing. While retaining the snorkel-like crash structure at the front, it also added a range of openings around it, opening up the underside of the nose to a greater supply of clean airflow and increasing the efficiency of the floor.

But already, the team has seen fit to make a change. The new nose moves the mounting pylons to the front wing closer together, and now fit on the underside, meaning that the team had more freedom to reshape the array of nostrils, presumably to get the flow paths of the air more to the designers' taste. The top nostril had also been fused into one (inset).

Only Verstappen received the rhinoplasty-affected RB16, as only two new noses were available, and so Albon had to contend with the old snouts. Verstappen said that the team was "still understanding the difference between the wings but you know it's different philosophies behind it.

"I can't really tell you how much of a difference it is because I don't know," he said. "But yeah, we're learning, we're understanding different things."

Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Verstappen was, as expected, the quicker of the two in qualifying given his previous form at the Spielberg circuit, but an electrical problem - which put Verstappen's car into anti-stall - ended the Dutchman's hopes of making a contra-strategy work by starting on the medium tyre early on.

Albon, with the old design, had that nose put out of joint in the manic final stages. Having taken soft tyres during the second safety car period, Albon was challenging Hamilton for second at Turn 4 - but was punted into a spin when he looked to have the move completed. The Thai driver eventually peeled over with a power unit problem at the end, but he felt that the victory was there for the taking.

Red Bull had also taken new floors to Austria, adding a collection of fins among the edge slots to help drive airflow outwards to protect the diffuser. Having run those fins in a filming day test, accosted by discussions of whether the team was permitted to do so (but, arguably having not been in scrutineering yet, it presumably was) the team conducted back to back tests - with Albon on the old floor and Verstappen with the new design. Despite those additions, the Grim Reaper wielded its remorseless scythe and the team retreated to its COVID bubble with no points to show for it.

Renault's mixed bag

Touting a triple-upgrade package having pooled the planned updates for the early flyaways, Renault made a litany of additions to its R.S.20 chassis - most notably, a new front wing.

The upper wing flap on the new wing has a smaller chord length on the outside compared to the old wing, ultimately reducing the overall downforce but improving the outwash characteristic that aerodynamicists crave. The square cut-out in the endplate means the air passing the front wing elements can also help achieve that outwards airflow.

The endplate's footplate is now squarer and flatter on the bottom. This is to shape and release a vortex which helps push air around the front tyre earlier, while the small fin on the back of the footplate on the bottom wing (below the T of Renault) also helps to push that air outwards to reduce the drag that the front tyre creates.

Renault also had new bargeboards, adding a collection of vertical serrations (seen under the Microsoft logo) to bottom grating to further control the wake produced by the front tyres and the flow from the front wing. They're minor additions in form, but have an important job as part of the bargeboard package.

Every single team is going to have to make quick, agile adaptations to their 2020 machinery to ensure they last the distance in the Styrian GP, without the resources to necessarily make permanent fixes

Although practice was reassuring, and Renault was well within the top 10 at a circuit it has historically struggled at, Daniel Ricciardo could do no better than 10th on the grid as Esteban Ocon was dumped out in Q2. Ricciardo was yet another driver to face the brunt of reliability problems as, when fighting Vettel and Stroll for eighth, his power unit could go no further than the eighteenth lap.

With just a week between the Austrian GP and the Styrian GP, every single team is going to have to make quick, agile adaptations to their 2020 machinery to ensure they last the distance - without the resources to necessarily make permanent fixes to the issues experienced by a litany of drivers this weekend.

Perhaps, with a weekend's worth of data at the same circuit, the teams will be able to enjoy a less scrappy grand prix next time out but, with a selection of weather forecasts predicting thunderstorms in time for next Saturday - the elements could provide a further addition to the hysteria in Styria.