Why the F1 formbook disappeared in Austria

What a difference a week makes. After the French Grand Prix a week ago, I described the race as "a bit of a non-event on a track that is about as interesting as driving across the Sahara Desert". The Austrian Grand Prix could not have been more different.

The cars were largely the same thanks to the one-week gap, as it didn't allow much time for major developments. Yet the Austrian race, with the same ingredients in terms of teams, drivers and machinery, turned into one of the best for a long time.

There are a few reasons for this. The Red Bull Ring is a circuit that punishes drivers for their mistakes, there are elevation changes into, through and out of most corners and, more importantly, it didn't play to the strengths of the Mercedes.

On top of that, Mercedes did not have adequate cooling capacity for the abnormally high temperatures, with both drivers asked to lift and coast for 400m each lap of the race.

The elevation changes mean that the fastest racing line is not necessarily just the largest corner radius. It allows, and actually forces, the drivers to find the line that suits their car set-up best.

As an example, the last corner on entry is downhill but then it goes into a compression. You have to believe in the extra grip that the compression gives, and you must have the car heading in the right direction when you drive into it.

Turns 1 and 3 are uphill braking zones. Turn 4 is downhill braking and Turn 9 is blind on entry as you come over the crest, so it means the drivers have a bigger input than normal. Also, the car's mechanical set-up needs to be more compliant to allow greater tyre contact through the varying cambers on the track surface.

I have heard far too often that the Mercedes is faster around the corners and that the Ferrari is faster on the straights - to the extent that Mercedes seems to be saying it so often that it's possibly questioning the legality of why and how Ferrari can achieve this.

What the team needs to remember is that when the hybrid engine rules first came into play in 2014, the Mercedes was so much faster than everyone else. Straightline speed versus downforce - and hence drag - will always be a compromise and it is circuit dependent. Ferrari may have found a magic bullet, but I don't think so.

The simple answer is Mercedes got it wrong and this race was simply an interlude in its dominance, and a chance for a glimpse of what a three-team battle for the championship would look like. But - spoiler alert - we shouldn't expect this to happen too often. As Aristotle once said, 'one swallow does not a summer make'.

Austria had a topsy-turvy grid, with a few drivers out of place because of various penalties for indiscretions or problems, so there was activity from front to back once the race started.

Leclerc will be feeling a bit disappointed, but both he and Verstappen drove impeccably and both deserved to win. But only one can

Charles Leclerc started from pole and Max Verstappen from second on the grid, which ended up with the Red Bull driver sitting eighth in the middle of the first lap after his anti-stall had kicked in off the line.

He drove fantastically from there and both he and Leclerc just showed that if given the tools they require, the young guns are able to give the old hardened professionals a pretty tough time.

I'm not going to go into the subject of penalties, but many will be asking 'should' Verstappen have received a penalty for his block pass on Leclerc? Personally I don't think so. It was a brutal pass and they did touch, but at least it was a real racing overtaking manoeuvre.

Yes, it was assisted by the dreaded DRS to allow Verstappen to get close enough, but at least the battle came after closing the DRS and was not just: mirror, signal, manoeuvre, overtake.

You could see with every car Verstappen passed that he just had that little bit more momentum and belief in what he could do. I was a bit surprised that Ferrari didn't give Leclerc a little bit of a hurry-up much earlier in the race - finding a tenth per lap over 25 laps is a lot easier than finding half a second a lap over the last five laps.

Leclerc will be feeling a bit disappointed, but both he and Verstappen drove impeccably and both deserved to win. But only one can.

It was good to see Red Bull winning at its home circuit and for the Dutch fans the party will have lasted long into the night. But the big thing was that this was Honda's first win since returning to F1. Many thought this was impossible when Honda was struggling with McLaren, but it has now been achieved, and with engines in four cars it's proving that its reliability is strong.

All the cars finished in Austria, which, with the unexpected heatwave that has hit Europe and the car-destroying yellow sausage kerbs doing their best to stop that from happening, that was a miracle in itself.

Carlos Sainz Jr coming from 19th after engine penalties to finish eighth, and his team-mate Lando Norris sixth, just shows the progress McLaren has made. At the moment, McLaren firmly heads that midfield pack.

But, on the other hand, the other Renault-engined cars of the works' team seem to have gone in the opposite direction. Finishing 12th and 13th is not what management would have wanted to see. After it promised big things for the French GP, to the watching world that progress has been invisible.

Everyone at Haas must be tearing their hair out. On some occasions the car can put in that one lap in qualifying, but in general the team has dropped the ball as the season has progressed. Finishing 16th and 19th last weekend was probably the biggest blow. Haas just can't get on top of the tyres and has fallen away after such a promising start.

Alfa Romeo had one of its best weekends of the season with both cars just in the points. But the others - Racing Point, Toro Rosso, Renault, Haas and Williams - all missed the points. There really was no reason for this, other than that they just weren't fast enough.

One thing that must be addressed with immediate effect is drivers backing up and driving at a snail's pace to get track position to start a quick lap, or even after one has been completed.

What we saw in qualifying when Daniil Kvyat came around Turn 9 and almost tripped over George Russell's Williams - which was being delayed by several other cars - was downright dangerous.

A serious accident could be just around the corner, but with current technology the answer is very simple. You could use the car's fastest-speed profile up to that point to say that you have to travel at something like 90% of your fastest speed from the pit exit line. That would mean the maximum speed difference on the piece of track where Kvyat and Russell nearly came together would have been about 20km/h rather than 180km/h.

The lap-speed profiles all exist and it would be very easy to have a light on the dash that informs the driver if they are within the limits. Green if you're within the 10%, red if you're outside it. After all, they drive their qualifying laps to a time delta that updates frequently from the GPS, so to do the same relative to speed could probably be done overnight.

We will most likely have the same at Silverstone, where everyone will be doddering around at the end of the lap. So why not try it as a test at the British GP and see how it works out?

While I'm on the subject of Silverstone, we head there for the last time under the current contract agreement. Silverstone is a real driver's circuit. The drivers love it, the teams love it, the fans love it - it is the spiritual home of F1. If it's allowed to slip off the calendar it will just prove to me that Liberty Media, as not-quite-so-new owner, is getting a bit mixed up.

F1 needs traditional circuits that are steeped in history and Silverstone is one of those. Find a solution that's not quite as one-sided as the old contract and allow everyone to make a profit. But, more importantly, allow everyone to enjoy real racing on a real track.