How the Styrian GP exposed the scale of Red Bull's Mercedes-mountain climb

Two races into the 2020 season and Mercedes has levelled the score at the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen had given the home team the glory in the last two 'normal' seasons but, in this year without precedent, Mercedes has struck back mightily - with the score since 2018 now 2-2. Since 2014, when the Austrian track rejoined the Formula 1 calendar after a decade's absence it is actually 6-2. The more you look, the worse it gets for Red Bull and that was the main takeaway from the first Styrian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton was triumphant for the first time in 2020, hitting back after his season opener had gone awry. With Verstappen starting alongside him - and any hope of strategic tyre variation between F1's two leading squads removed by the thrilling wet-weather qualifying session - this was another chance to see exactly how they measure up.

The incident-packed Austrian GP had been about winning in the changing circumstances of the race, which Mercedes of course did with Valtteri Bottas. But Red Bull had hoped Verstappen's contra-strategy would keep him in the fight, and then go on to take the win when the gearbox gremlins struck Mercedes. Plus, Alex Albon had the chance to take an unfancied win on fresher tyres late on before his clash with Hamilton.

By contrast, and with the teams having had their first ever chance to put what they learned in one race into an exact copy the next weekend, the Styrian GP was much more conventional. All the leading runners took the start on the soft rubber - with Bottas out of position in fourth after a glazed brake in qualifying hindered his challenge. So, the stage was set, finally, to see just where things stood at the front of the pack over a full race distance.

And Red Bull came up short. Or, did Mercedes show that it has enough in hand to see off the challenge? Either way, it ended in yet another 1-2 for statistically the best team of F1's current era.

Things started off well for Hamilton and frustratingly for Verstappen - as the world champion roared away from the 89th pole of his F1 career. To make things that bit more complicated for Verstappen, for the second weekend in a row he had to fend off the advances of a McLaren on the opening tour.

This time it was Carlos Sainz Jr and, although a trip across the Red Bull Ring's kerb-heavy Turn 1 runoff cost the Spaniard momentum against Verstappen, by the time the Dutchman was sure he had second under control at the exit of Turn 3 Hamilton was gone.

Once the track had been swept clear of Ferrari bodywork - following contact between Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel at Turn 3 that put both scarlet cars out - which had required a safety car intervention before lap one had been completed, Hamilton set about establishing his lead at the restart on lap four of 71.

Over the next 16 tours he extended it to 4.105 seconds and then on lap 20 Mercedes turned the screw. Hamilton put in a 1m08.183s, which was 0.202s faster than his previous best at that point, with Red Bull soon warning Verstappen that the Mercedes drivers had been told to push as they approached the end of the first stint.

"If I would push more, Lewis would push more. You could see once you have to push a bit more and you have the tyres to do so, then I'm just a bit too slow" Max Verstappen

It was Mercedes drivers plural because by that stage Bottas had dispatched Sainz with a blast of DRS on the approach to the downhill right of Turn 4 - where Hamilton and Albon had come to blows the previous week - and the Finn was 2.68s behind Verstappen. Red Bull was in a bind. Verstappen seemed to be able to at least gamely hang onto Hamilton, albeit a chunk adrift, and was therefore in the mix, but he couldn't stop the time getting away.

"Lewis [was] pace-managing," Verstappen said of the opening stint. "Of course, he knows my lap times, that the gap is not closing or growing. I'm just doing my laps. There's always a bit of margin, but if I would push more, Lewis would push more. You could see once you have to push a bit more and you have the tyres to do so, then I'm just a bit too slow."

That is a point to return to later, but Red Bull was doubly undone by the lack of a second car in the podium fight. By the time Verstappen stopped on lap 24, Albon was 28.150s off the lead, over 22s behind his team-mate and crucially 20.165s behind Bottas. This meant Mercedes essentially held all the cards - a pace advantage and two cars to outmanoeuvre Red Bull.

The home team knew it had only two choices - keep Verstappen out and more than likely lose track position to a Bottas undercut, or go aggressive - pit its lead car and hope Verstappen would be able to hang on with older tyres in a late-race battle.

"If we'd have pitted later they'd have pitted earlier," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner later reflected. "So the problem is if you have a faster car [against you] and we only had one car to play with at that point in the race.

"You either bank track position, or you concede it. We chose to retain track position by pitting and so then Bottas was instructed to stay out, because he'd obviously been instructed to close to put them within an undercut."

Red Bull's decision meant the Mercedes drivers did not have to think about coming in immediately, as Hamilton's early lead gave him safe breathing room and Bottas had to run longer to create the tyre-life advantage against Verstappen at the end of the race.

Hamilton stopped on lap 27 and from there, with the net lead secure, he was able to go about a business he knows very well - sealing a race win. The story at the front was then really all about Verstappen and Bottas, and who would occupy the second two steps of the bizarre, robot-trolley attended, podium and in what order.

When he eventually came in to join Hamilton and Verstappen on the medium tyres at the end of lap 34, Bottas knew he had to charge down and pass his rival on-track. When his second stint began, he faced a 8.267s deficit, but he immediately began to erode Verstappen's advantage.

Soon, though, things became more complicated for Bottas as the gap stabilised and it briefly began to look as if Verstappen might have enough in reserve to keep ahead. The reason, according to Bottas, was a lack of help from backmarkers - and there were a fair few of them, with everyone up to and including the ninth-placed car a lap down by the end.

"I went through quite a bit of traffic," Bottas explained. "There were many backmarkers and some of them it was pretty shocking that sometimes I spent more than a lap with them having blue flags and just not moving away. They were racing each other in front of me and not really caring that they had blue flags. So I hope that will be looked into [and] I think that's why I lost quite a bit of momentum."

Once in clear air, Bottas began to make more progress, which was aided by Verstappen's 10-laps-older tyres inevitably losing their edge and his car picking up damage. Once again the Red Bull Ring's kerbs bit, with Verstappen losing the right-hand edge of his front wing - and later having to deal with "a few bits" of his rear wing endplates "falling off" - possibly around the lap-57 point, when he began lapping over half a second slower compared to his previous efforts.

By the end of lap 65, Bottas was within striking distance, six quicker than Mercedes had predicted when it had told him it would come down to the final tour. But he still had to get by one of F1's feistiest drivers - and Verstappen did not make it easy.

When Bottas looked to have got the move done by using DRS to get ahead on the inside run to Turn 4, Verstappen hung on around the outside into the corner exit acceleration zone that masquerades as Turn 5, and was then on the inside of Turn 6 - a positional advantage he used to run his opponent out wide and stay firmly ahead.

Only for one more lap, though. Next time by, Bottas pulled the same move, only this time he made sure to defend the outside line as he ran through Turn 4. Second was his and Red Bull instead turned Verstappen's attention to the fastest lap point, as he had enough in hand over Albon to come in and put the softs back on. But he emerged in traffic and could not steal back a point on the triumphant Mercedes team.

That Verstappen had enough over Albon to do that is itself pretty damning - and is the second big concerning point of Red Bull's defeat. Looking at the averages, the second-year driver gave away very nearly a second per lap to his team-mate until Verstappen pitted for the first time.

"We need to understand that with him and hopefully help him get more comfortable with the car on the heavy fuel," said Horner. "Because his pace in the second half of the race was strong."

Albon's drive last Sunday brought back memories of the 2019 Hungarian GP, where Red Bull and Verstappen lost victory to Mercedes and Hamilton because they didn't have a second car - then driven by Pierre Gasly - to offer strategic assistance

And that is not wrong - over essentially the same second stint as Bottas (Albon stopped one lap later, on lap 35), Albon effectively matched the Mercedes driver - finishing with a lap time average of 1m08.089s to 1m07.994s. The problem was time he had haemorrhaged in the race's first half, and even when things looked better in the second stint Albon still nearly lost fourth to the charging Sergio Perez.

The Racing Point driver had started down in 17th after an underwhelming qualifying, looking like for the second week in a row that he was in danger of squandering the enormous potential of the controversial RP20. But in the race Perez seemed to have made complete amends - rising magnificently to run fifth in the closing stages, dispatching his team-mate Lance Stroll (who later said Racing Point may have "debatably the second quickest car") in the process.

But, after averaging 0.172s a lap quicker than Bottas on a similar-length second stint (with his slow final tours with damage removed), Perez undid all his fine work in a clash with Albon that was near-perfect copy of the one that potentially cost the Red Bull driver victory in race one.

On lap 69, Perez made a late dive to the inside of Turn 4, where it must be said Albon had left the door pretty wide open. The problem for the Racing Point driver was that he'd been given so much room that what happened next would look worse, as Perez slid into Albon's right-rear. Unlike his clash with Hamilton the previous Sunday, though, Albon managed to hold on and it was his assaulter who came off worse, with Perez breaking his front wing and losing 13s over the final two and a half laps to the cars behind.

This meant he lost fifth to Lando Norris, who had a second thrilling final tour in two races as he shot by, having seemingly come alive in the second stint. Where his McLaren team-mate Sainz had to count the cost of slow pitstop on his way to ninth, Norris surged and came upon Perez at the penultimate turn as if he was running in a different class - stealing to the inside of the final corner and sealing P5 at the death, with Perez hanging on in a drag race to the line ahead of Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo, despite his wing damage.

Returning to Albon, the big problem he now faces is that his drive last Sunday brought back memories of the 2019 Hungarian GP, where Red Bull and Verstappen lost victory to Mercedes and Hamilton because they didn't have a second car - then driven by Pierre Gasly - to offer strategic assistance.

Now, this isn't to say Albon should fear for his seat - the two situations, as will become clear, are suitably different. And in any case despite the fact the Hungary race is up next, the 2020 season is at a very different point thanks to the pandemic delay. For what it's worth, Verstappen dismissed the similarities.

"It wouldn't have mattered at the end," he said when asked by Autosport if his lack of team-mate help had been costly against the Mercedes duo. "No. I don't think so. It's of course nicer, also for himself, to be up there but I don't think today it would have mattered - like last year, for example, in Hungary."

And the reason why it did not matter so much will not be of much comfort to Red Bull. Whereas in Hungary last year it lost a clear shot at victory, last Sunday's race was a comprehensive defeat. Mercedes is, quite simply, quicker.

"The [RB16's] balance is just fine but it's just not fast enough over a lap so we need to work on a bit of power on the straights and a bit more grip," assessed Verstappen.

This weekend's return to the Hungaroring will give Red Bull a chance to hit back at a different track - and one that will not offer Mercedes quite as much of an advantage when it comes to engine power, which is something Horner felt had made the difference in the opening two races. This was backed up by the victorious team principal.

"I think where we lost to Red Bull is the slow speed," said Toto Wolff. "Particularly Turn 3 and 4 [at the Red Bull Ring] seem to be our vulnerabilities. Everywhere else on the straights and in the fast corners, we are quicker. Budapest is a totally different ball game. Lots of downforce, lots of these slow and medium-speed corners. We'll see how it works there."

Hamilton needed to hit back after Bottas' first-race win and, after a slight blip with a subpar FP2 that stemmed from Mercedes experimenting with set-ups, he did so in style. Where there were errors a week before, there was just nothing but excellence

One thing Mercedes did not have to contend with in the repeat Austrian race was the gearbox drama that nearly proved to be so costly in the curtain raiser. After fitting new looms in an effort to fix the issue, which Wolff admitted after the Styrian event Mercedes was not "100% sure" it had solved, Hamilton and Bottas did not have to drive conservatively just to make the finish.

Given his starring, essentially faultless, drive, it seems appropriate to end with Hamilton's thoughts on his first win of the season, which gave him the chance to continue his commendable push for racial equality, with a raised fist as he climbed from his car and on the podium. He had needed to hit back after Bottas' first-race win and, after a slight blip with a subpar FP2 that stemmed from Mercedes experimenting with set-ups, he did so in style. Where there were errors a week before, there was just nothing but excellence.

"It is much different starting from first than it is starting from fifth," Hamilton said as he compared his two race drives in Austria. "But I would say that I generally enjoy fighting for races from further back. That has been the way since I was a kid, since I first started karting, as I was always at the back in a shitty go-kart.

"Leading from the front is a different scenario but I'll definitely take it. It's a different type of management and a different type of race, perhaps not as fun for the fans to watch but I wouldn't say any less challenging on myself. Just different. I tried to perfect it the best way I could and I think I got everything I could and more."