How Bottas won F1's survival of the fittest in Austria

Despite all that was different about the 2020 Formula 1 season opener given the major changes brought by the coronavirus pandemic, there were some reassuringly familiar themes in an action-packed Austrian Grand Prix.

So much happened in the 71-lap race at the Red Bull Ring that it emphasised again the tragedy of the pandemic, with spectators barred from attending an event that would have sent them into raptures multiple times. There was the political wrangling over the pre-season controversies ahead of the race - Red Bull's protest of Mercedes' dual-axis steering in particular - and a last-minute grid penalty for the reigning world champion after previously uncovered footage proved Lewis Hamilton had impinged the rules around yellow flags in the closing moments of qualifying.

The race itself also called back so many memories of 2019. Valtteri Bottas emerged victorious in the season opener and Mercedes again faced dramatic and unexpected reliability concerns, as it had done at the same track in the last two years. Red Bull rolled the dice on strategy with Max Verstappen in the same way it had done in 2019 - getting him through Q2 on the medium Pirelli tyre to start the race on the contra strategy - and there was another late, controversial wheel-to-wheel clash. In summary, the Red Bull Ring yet again threw up another thrilling grand prix.

It was a race that could be divided into three distinct phases and was ultimately a contest that was robbed of chess-like strategy planning, with heat-of-the-moment opportunistic tactical calls required. It was a race that favoured the bold and mercilessly punished the slightest error.

The first phase was undoubtedly the most conventional. Bottas comfortably led away from pole on his soft tyres, stealing a 2.047-second lead on the opening tour as Verstappen was forced to resist a seemingly unending challenge from McLaren's Lando Norris - the star of qualifying with fourth (which became third on the grid after Hamilton's penalty).

Once the Red Bull driver had established that second was firmly his, he set about chasing Bottas, armed with his medium-compound rubber and planning to run deep, hoping no one behind would attempt to undercut his strategy and cost him track position. But Verstappen wouldn't get that far.

Bottas had stretched his lead to 3.333s at the end of lap 10, when Verstappen slowed on the long run up to the track's Turn 3 uphill, tight right-hander. He'd lost drive approaching the opening corner and try as he might, visibly urging the car to respond to the settings activations he was desperately triggering as he toured slowly back to the pits, Verstappen could not find a way back into the race. He was the first to fall in what would prove to be a very attritional contest.

Red Bull remained tight-lipped in the aftermath, with team principal Christian Horner only cryptically saying that the issue that had occurred on Verstappen's Honda power unit was "not something that we haven't seen previously".

So Bottas suddenly found himself with a 7.9s lead out front, with a new threat coming from behind in the form of his illustrious team-mate. Hamilton had made little initial progress in the opening laps from his new P5 starting spot - in no small part thanks to a pretty firm shove from Alex Albon at the downhill Turn 4 right-hander on the opening lap. The Red Bull driver was ahead and acceptably used his position to shut the door on the world champion at the same spot where 60 laps later they would come to actual blows.

Hamilton tracked his rival in the early laps, after they'd both made it past Norris by the end of the fourth tour, and then used DRS to breeze by on the run to Turn 4 on lap nine. Another wave of deja vu now crashed down - with Verstappen out, Mercedes led the way, both of its cars at the head of the pack and seemingly in a race of their own. The circumstances had changed drastically come the end, but for the rest of the first stint Bottas and Hamilton played a typical cat-and-mouse chase.

"It was getting quite exciting, because I needed to get in as close as possible. Then the safety car came out, and obviously that put a spanner in the works" Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton slowly eroded his team-mate's lead, cutting it to 3.242s by the start of lap 26. It wasn't clear if Bottas was simply letting his team-mate close while preserving his tyres - an art Hamilton has mastered and has proved to be one of the difference between the duo in the past three years.

Bottas said he "could really control" his pace to "really make sure we could get to the target stop lap". He added: "And I tried to do the right things with the tyres and maintaining the car."

But Hamilton saw things differently, saying afterwards: "I was closing down Valtteri during that period. And it was just at the time where he was really starting to fall off the cliff with his tyres. And I could see the gain that I was having each lap, so it was getting quite exciting, because I needed to get in as close as possible. Then the safety car came out, and obviously that put a spanner in the works."

The particular spanner was Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, whose retirement on lap 26 pushed the race into its second phase. The Dane had been under attack from the returning Esteban Ocon when they approached Turn 3, and as the Renault came by on the inside, a sinister puff of carbon brake dust appeared from Magnussen's right-front tyre and he shot into the runoff beyond the corner, pirouetting to a stop by the barriers. But his finishing position was firmly in the line of fire at the end of a high-speed straight, and the safety car was called into action to allow for the VF-20's safe recovery.

Mercedes brought the leaders in, Bottas's right-front soft looking particularly angry despite him being "less than 10 laps from the planned stop". We'll never know what would have happened had the opening stint played out as planned. Instead of a possible contest, Hamilton followed his team-mate in for fresh hard tyres and rejoined without losing time as Bottas had been serviced by the time he arrived.

When the race restarted on lap 31, the Mercedes drivers quickly pulled clear of the pack again, Bottas immediately leaping to a 1.026s lead as he demonstrated a skill with safety car restarts that he would be forced to rely upon twice more before the day was done. But while the second phase again boiled down to a straight fight between the Mercedes drivers, it took on an altogether different nature when it became clear that both leading cars were under threat of an early exit with mechanical dramas.

Bottas had been warned as early as lap three that he needed to drive in a manner to protect his car, but at the time this simply seemed to be a reminder he didn't need to over exert himself given the advantage the W11 had over the field, albeit with the remaining threat of Verstappen's alternative strategy while it was a factor.

Racing Point's Lance Stroll had joined Verstappen and Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo in making it three retirements in the opening 20 laps when he pulled out on lap 20 down on power. The works Mercedes team then cited his issue in a call to Hamilton on lap 23 that a sensor problem was at play in the retirement of the customer power unit, and the leaders were advised to start avoiding kerbs to reduce the risk of the same problem plaguing their cars.

Bottas received a coded warning six laps after Hamilton had told Mercedes on lap 35 that he wanted to remain in control of his own engine mode settings in the heat of his chase. Mercedes responded to warn it would soon be turning down the power on both cars - although team boss Toto Wolff insisted afterwards that this was not a move to freeze the race as Mercedes would "never interfere in a fight in the first few races of a season".

For several minutes after lap 42, Mercedes' team radio airwaves were awash with ever more stark warnings to the leaders about using the kerbs, such was its fear that a gearbox sensor was threatening to give in - and Hamilton was implicitly told it was not a concern regarding suspension. In the end, Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles had to give an identical no-nonsense warning that the issue was "critical" for both Bottas and Hamilton to get them to adjust their driving away from the kerbs.

"Initially it was a tricky one because I was watching in the mirrors and I could see Lewis still pushing pretty hard and making use of all the track - but obviously you want to prioritise the reliability," said Bottas.

"It took a couple of laps to really optimise the new way of driving and avoiding the kerbs. The kerbs here, the more you go onto them, the vibration just kind of ramps up. So, you get a feel for what is still OK and what is too much. There are only a few places where you really need to take care, so after one or two laps, we got used to it."

Bottas, it seemed, adjusted better than Hamilton as he was able to open a gap that had been 0.674s at the end of lap 43, to 1.757s at the end of the tour before the next unforeseen development heralded the arrival of the race's third and final act on lap 51.

Just a few moments after Romain Grosjean went off at Turn 4 as a result of the same brake issue that had put his team-mate Magnussen out - although Grosjean was able to recover to the pits to retire - George Russell pulled over on the opposite side of the track at the same corner. There was little time to reflect on what was a bitter twist for the British racer, who had shone in qualifying and was running 13th and in the hunt for points given so many cars were failing. This was because the safety car was again called into action as Russell's Williams was recovered.

"The biggest advantage [Albon] had was on the warm-up of the tyre, because Mercedes had got to get the hard tyre going after quite a few laps behind the safety car" Christian Horner

Mercedes kept the now subdued leaders out on their used hard tyres, but Red Bull opted to bring Albon in again, sacrificing third place in the snake to Sergio Perez, but gaining fresh softs and a grip advantage. Behind, Norris and his team-mate Carlos Sainz also pitted for new mediums, the latter coming in one lap later and therefore remaining behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, who had also put on new mediums for the run to the flag at the same time as Norris.

On lap 55, Bottas got the jump on Hamilton again, and behind them Albon passed Perez into Turn 3, a split-second before the safety car was required again. The reason for its sudden reappearance was that Kimi Raikkonen's Alfa Romeo had dramatically shed its front-right wheel as he blasted towards the final corner at the restart. The wheelnut had been cross-threaded at his own stop under the Russell safety car and, once the wheel had worked loose and flown off, Raikkonen parked up on the pitstraight. A tractor was required to remove his stricken C39.

The time it took to move the Alfa left the race with an 11-lap blast to the finish, and it suddenly seemed that Mercedes was in real danger of defeat. Albon had been allowed back by Perez after ceding third in the chaos of the safety car system being activated for the third and final time, and the 22-year-old was set to bring his soft-tyre advantage to bear.

He did just that, but there was no fairytale ending - disaster coming upon him with glory in sight, just as it had at the 2019 Brazilian GP seven months but just two races before. A clash with the same driver cost him dearly, too.

"The biggest advantage he had was on the warm-up of the tyre, because Mercedes had got to get the hard tyre going after quite a few laps behind the safety car," said Horner. "We could see the Mercedes was very quick today so he needed to make it work."

Albon attacked Hamilton almost immediately, feinting to the outside at Turn 3 and then going around the outside of the Mercedes at Turn 4 to echo their opening lap exchange. This time, though, there was contact - Hamilton, on full lock, clipped the Red Bull with his left-front to Albon's right rear and spun him into the gravel just when it seemed he was by and looking onwards to Bottas. Albon later retired with power unit trouble of his own, but he was insistent afterwards that he "could have won that race".

"I felt like Brazil was a bit more 50/50, this one I felt like I did the move already and I was already focusing on Bottas," he added. "It was so late, the contact."

Hamilton was initially apologetic but later said he felt it had been a "racing incident" as the pair disagreed on how much space Albon had on his outside before the contact. The stewards, though, swiftly blamed Hamilton and handed him a five-second race time addition.

This had all sorts of implications for the closing stages. Hamilton needed to build a gap to the chasing Leclerc, who had frankly mugged Perez at Turn 3 on lap 66 (after leaping past Norris two tours before) - a stunning move to the podium on a day Ferrari would have been nowhere without the many race interruptions. When Norris bumped his way past Perez at the same spot on lap 69, he too suddenly had the chance to take an unexpected podium, but he had to charge.

Wolff said Mercedes briefly considered ordering Bottas to let Hamilton by to build a buffer in clean air, but it ultimately felt that there was "too much risk" and "too much complexity to do such a switch". Leclerc was close enough to run happily to the flag, overturning a low-key start to the weekend where he had lagged behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel in practice because he "hadn't been driving well", and claiming his 11th F1 podium 2.7s behind the victorious Bottas at the flag.

But the final word has to go to Norris. The 20-year-old set the race's fastest lap on the final tour, aided by McLaren instructing him to deploy his overtake engine mode on multiple occasions to extract the maximum power, beating Hamilton in the final classification by just 0.198s.

"I'm speechless," he said afterwards. "There were a few points during the race where I thought I kind of fudged it up quite a bit. I dropped to fifth with a few laps to go. A pretty cool last few laps having to push as much as I can - I'm a bit out of breath."

The 2020 F1 season might have been delayed and endangered, but it finally arrived in thrilling fashion at a track that more often than not hosts an enthralling grand prix. Thanks to the compacted nature of the new calendar, the field gets to do it all again in the same spot in just one week. Norris might not be the only one excited to do so.