#0001: He drove like a lion

Welcome to The Gravel Trap. The F1 newsletter so fresh Lewis Hamilton wears it for jewelry.

I love sprint weekends. 2 races for the price of 1. On TV at least.

- Ryan David | Publisher

P.S. This newsletter contains salty language courtesy of Toto Wolff.

🇦🇹Race recap🇦🇹

Austria was fun. Unless your name's Sergio Perez or Carlos Sainz. Charles Leclerc won his first race he didn't start on pole. And it looked simpler than cracking a safe in a heist movie.

After the sprint, Leclerc was confident Ferrari had Red Bull. He was right. Passing Max was so easy he did it 3 times. Team boss Mattia said he drove like a lion. However, Max reported serious tire degradation and said P2 was better than he expected.

Oh yeah. Leclerc also battled a sticky throttle in the closing stages of the race. Commentators reported in their lovely British accents that Charles was likely pushing the pedal down and pulling it up.

Disappointments🔥💔

For Perez and Sainz, yesterday was a different story. Checo (aka Sergio) collided with George Russell on lap 1. Red Bull knew he wasn't going to score points so he retired after 25 laps.

• As expected, Checo blames George and George blames Checo.

Russell got a 5-second penalty and still finished P4.

It was worse for Sainz. He was cruising towards a "very easy one-two for the team." Until lap 56. Without warning, his engine blew up. I'm talking panel-cracking, flame-shooting blow up. It was scary.

Sainz will likely face a penalty or two in future races because he may exceed his part allocation.

Everyone else

Red Bull, Ferrari, and some unfortunate behavior dominated headlines. However, Mercedes quietly earned P3 & P4 which is great for their confidence. Mick Schumacher finished P6, his highest ever. Fans loved it and voted him Driver of the Day with 24.5% of the vote.

Kevin Magnussen finished P8 putting both Haas cars in the points. Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris bounced back from terrible weekends to finish P9 and P7 respectively. Esteban Ocon earned P5 and Fernando Alonso rounded out the top 10 to get both Alpine cars in the points.

See the full results.

Fan behavior

Rude, inappropriate, and downright shocking conduct blew up on Twitter. Women claimed some fans–drunk Orange Army ones in particular–yelled racist and homophobic stuff, catcalled and jeered, and even lifted up a woman’s dress. Without permission obviously.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff had a succinct response, “We don’t want you, fuck off.” Mercedes invited the woman whose dress was lifted into their garage.

Anyone who spoke about it—from Christian Horner to Max Verstappen to the official F1 Twitter account—condemned everything and said it’s important F1 is a safe space for all to enjoy. Sebastian Vettel wants them banned for life.

I read several tweets in which women (and men) claimed they’ll never return to the Austrian GP.

Penalties

Source: @borristhechef

Almost half the field got penalized yesterday. Rookie F1 fans everywhere got a crash course in track limits. Here’s everyone who got yoinked.

Leclerc, Verstappen, and Hamilton each were fined €10,000 for having driver assistants in Parc Ferme. The fines were suspended.

Elsewhere in F1

McLaren's giving American IndyCar driver Colton Herta a shot at driving a Formula 1 car this week. Due to a rule change, teams can drive cars from last year in private tests. Also because of rules, teams must run a young drive (aka someone who hasn't driven more than two F1 races) in at least 2 free practice sessions this year.

Colton will drive the car in Portimao.

Meme lane

Thank you

Thanks for reading The Gravel Trap today. If you loved it, please share it with a Charles Leclerc fan.

Next stop: 🇫🇷France🇫🇷. Au revoir!