The continuing trends that should sustain F1's title fight at the Styrian GP

A year on from Formula 1's Austria double-header, the championship returns to the Red Bull Ring for the Styrian Grand Prix. Last year's race set the tone for Mercedes' continued dominance, but this year's offering so far leans into the current trends of a battle royale between F1's frontguard teams...

Alex Kalinauckas Jun 25, 2021, 8:24 PM

Almost a year ago, Formula 1 headed to Austria for its delayed 2020 season opener at the Red Bull Ring.

Many months earlier, in a pretty much pre-COVID lifetime, Mercedes had dominated testing, but needed the delays of the initial social lockdowns in Europe to fix a pretty major engine reliability problem. Across the first two races of that campaign, the season’s initial trends were revealed, but when F1 departed for Hungary the pecking order picture was inevitably incomplete at that stage.

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Author Alex Kalinauckas

Alex Kalinauckas is Autosport's Grand Prix Editor, covering every Formula 1 race since the start of 2020. After completing a master's degree in journalism at Goldsmiths College University of London in 2014, he worked for a range of motorsport and technology publications while covering national racing as an Autosport freelancer.

A lifelong motorsport fan - no one in his family can explain quite how or why such a development first occurred - Alex joined the Autosport staff in April 2017 as the magazine’s Assistant Editor covering Formula 2 and GP3, before being made Formula E correspondent and Autosport.com’s Plus Editor in March 2018. He lives in north-east London and is constantly frustrated by the Central Line.