After a long delay to the start of the season due to Coronavirus Pandemic, Formula One returned to action at Red Bull Ring in Austria with it being the first race of the season and oh my my what a race it was. With as many as seven restarts and nine drivers either retiring or crashing out of the race, Valteri Bottas kept his cool to win the race quite comfortably leading every single lap of the race. Charles Leclerc claimed the second position and Lando Norris got his career’s first ever podium finish (3rd) after Lewis Hamilton was a five second penalty for causing a collision with Alex Albon.

It was bad news for Mecedes before the race even began as Lewis Hamilton was handed a 3-place grid penalty since he failed to slow down under yellow flags in the Q3 session of Qualifying yesterday. This pushed Lewis Hamilton down into 5th place and likes of Verstappen (3rd), Norris (4th) and Albon (5th) one place ahead on the grid. The race start was quite good for all the front runners with Bottas leading the pack, Max Verstappen behind him in the second place and rest followed behind as it was in the qualifying. It was going all so well when on lap 13th Verstappen started to have some trouble with his engine and he was asked to pit the car for a change of tyres to see whether that would help or not but apparently that couldn’t resolve the issue and he was forced to retire the car on lap 14th. This meant that Mercedes were yet again 1st and 2nd with Bottas leading Hamilton by 4.3 seconds.

The reliability issues on the cars just kept on coming after this as on lap 19, Daniel Ricciardo was forced to retire the car due to some technical issues with his car. On lap 22, Stroll was asked to retire the car making him the third driver to retire out of the race. On lap 26th, Magnussen spun and off to the run-off area due to some issue on his front right braking system and safety car was deployed due to car being in an unsafe position. There was more drama to come in the race as on lap 51, Russel and Grosjean both had some issues due to which they had to retire and yet again safety car was deployed. Alex Albon took advantage of the safety car period and put on brand new soft tires, which at time dropped him one place down to 4th. However, in a few laps time he overtook Perez to get into podium places and got right behind Lewis Hamilton (2nd). On lap 62, history repeated itself, just as it happened in Brazilian Grand Prix last year, in the hopes of getting into second place Alex Albon collided with Lewis Hamilton with the former coming off worse as he dropped down to last and the latter getting a five second penalty.

In the end, Bottas claimed the victory with shear dominance as he led every single lap of the race. Hamilton crossed the finish line second but due to that 5 second penalty he dropped down to fourth position which meant that Charles Leclerc got second place for Ferrari after they had horrible start to the race and their pace not being upto mark. The biggest surprise of the race came from the McLaren driver Lando Norris as he drove one hell of a final lap and gained around 0.7 seconds to stay within 5 seconds of Hamilton to take that final place on the podium. This was Norris’ first ever podium in Formula One.

All in all, what a thrilling way to kick off the 2020 Formula One season. With Bottas winning the first race of the season and Mercedes clearly a level above in car performance, it’ll be quite intriguing to see who comes out on top at the end of this season. Will Mercedes continue their dominance or could Ferrari and Red Bull put that to an end this season?