The Silverstone circuit, where the stage will be held next week, is called home by many teams. But this is more likely not a house, but an anthill, where guests come to everyone at the same time. Only Ferrari at Monza and Red Bull at Spielberg have truly exclusive home stages.
These teams are two polar opposites of Formula 1. Ferrari has built a reputation for producing great sports cars that are only available to the powerful of this world, and Red Bull was initially treated with a sneer, as it only became a “soft drink manufacturer” who decides everything with money. But in sport, the most important thing is the result, and attitudes have changed over the years.
Red Bull Racing debuted in 2005 and has won 355 Grands Prix to date, including 10 and six championship titles. In the same period, Ferrari won 60 races and two titles. The statistics of the last two seasons are even more convincing: 25 victories for Red Bull, 4 for Ferrari and 1 for Mercedes. Impressive superiority.
This weekend in Spielberg is all about Red Bull. An entertainment program, performances by pilots and other extreme sportsmen, financed by an Austrian company. Dietrich Mateschitz is gone, but the advertising budgets are still there – and you can bet there will be plenty of cans of Red Bull drunk this weekend.
The stands will be completely filled and painted in the orange colors of the fans of Max Verstappen, who will take the podium as the undisputed favorite – in 2021 he won both races in Spielberg, and in the past he won the sprint, but Leclerc won the race. Charles hasn’t won since and Verstappen has 15 wins.
For the second year in a row, the Austrian stage will be run in sprint format on Saturday. Compared to 2022, the format has changed for the better – the winner of the qualifying is again considered the owner of the pole, which no longer confuses journalists and statisticians, the second training session was replaced by a qualifying for the sprint – Sprint Shootout, and the result of the sprint has no effect on the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix. Everything looks much more logical. It is not clear why this was not done immediately.
Yes, and we began to get used to such weekends. They bring in more money and promoters, and Formula 1, it makes sense that there are more and more weekends like this every year. Although the traditional format of the Grand Prix, especially on the old school circuits, is more familiar. Let’s see how it turns out this time.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
