Austrian and British GP Review: 2 weekends, 3 races, and 5 key talking points

Formula One is finally well into its European leg, which means back-to-back races with little time to turn around form or fortunes. After another breathless double-header, which culminated in a dramatic race in the sport's spiritual birthplace of Silverstone, F1 leaves drivers, teams and fans with plenty of points to ponder from the Austrian and British race weekends.

1) Mercedes May be Throwing Away Title

The W17 is undoubtedly the class of the field when it comes to outright pace, but is also showing itself to be notoriously brittle when it comes to finishing a race. So far this season, the Silver Arrows have lost a staggering 68 points due to DNFs alone (20% of their total points this year). While this deficit is yet to actively threaten their position at the top of the Constructors' Championship, their drivers are feeling the heat. A combination of mechanical and operational issues have resulted in Austria being the only race in the last five rounds where both drivers finished in the points, astounding for a car that, on merit, should finish on the podium, if not win every race.

As a result, both Kimi Antonelli and George Russell find Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton breathing down their necks, with their advantage now slashed to 32 and just seven points respectively. For now, their car advantage may still allow Mercedes to breathe easy, but with 60% of the season yet to come, there is no telling when one of their rivals makes a quantum leap in car development that erases their advantage. If that happens, the eight-time world champions may come to rue these 68 points lost.

2) Is Ferrari Ready to be a Challenger?

While Mercedes can take comfort from recent history as dominant champions, Ferrari have a tumultuous track record even as challengers, forget champions, which they haven't been for two decades. Yet, after winning two of the last three races, the Italian team finds itself with a real shot at a championship chase thanks to a combination of aggressive car updates, the aforementioned reliability woes of Mercedes, and the sheer skill of the most talented driver line-up on the grid.

But winning a championship requires flawless execution of race weekends, a skill that has sadly eluded Maranello since the glory years of Michael Schumacher. The team made a mess of their setup during the Austrian GP, leading to both drivers suffering severe tyre degradation. While Charles Leclerc benefited from Antonelli's woes to win the British GP, it was still a bittersweet weekend for Ferrari, as a strategic gamble to pit Lewis Hamilton during the late Safety Car backfired, allowing George Russell to snatch second place and deny the team a 1-2 finish.

Then there is the tricky prospect of potentially prioritising one of its drivers. Max Verstappen showed last year that a driver with his team focused entirely on him can come within an inch of upsetting a dominant team divided between two title contenders. Fans of Hamilton are already clamouring for Ferrari to back the seven-time world champion, who now sits just 32 points off the championship lead. But will Ferrari ever agree to sacrifice Leclerc, the homegrown prodigy many of the tifosi hoped would restore glory to Maranello, even if it is for the greater good?

3) Is Max Done With Red Bull?

For a driver many still believe has the best car control on the grid, Max Verstappen's form book this season has been littered with a series of uncharacteristic crashes, including over the last two weekends (during qualifying in Austria and during the main race at Silverstone while on course for a podium). However, the culpability for these crashes lies not with the Red Bull driver, but with the car itself, with the RB22's aero package proving notoriously unpredictable. The downturn in reliability has come just as the car is finally showing encouraging flashes of pace, tantalisingly teasing Verstappen with the tools to challenge at the front, only for it all to come crashing down, quite literally.

As pundits predict, the lack of reliability will eventually force Verstappen to second-guess every move he makes, an anathema for a driver whose greatest strength has always been racing on the absolute limit, lap after lap. Unsurprisingly, Verstappen cut a forlorn figure after the race, making his frustrations clear both in interviews and on social media, once again fuelling speculation over his future. Images of his father and manager in a heated discussion with Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies only intensified rumours that the Dutchman may finally be on his way out of the Red Bull family.

But to where? Mercedes and McLaren, despite having courted him with varying degrees of interest over the past few months, have both strongly indicated that they have no intention of changing their driver line-ups. That leaves Verstappen with no obvious route to another front-running team. Will mounting frustration eventually force the four-time world champion into stepping away from Formula 1, at least temporarily? The threat has never looked more real.

4) The Making of a New People's Champion

It's often said in a Formula 1 paddock that a champion starts getting truly loved not when they're dominating the field, but when they're dealing with adversity on their way back to the top. It's easy to attribute young Kimi Antonelli's remarkable feats this year to the dominance of his Mercedes, but that would be doing a disservice to the visible, race-by-race improvements in his racecraft. His overtaking moves are no longer kamikaze-esque, his qualifying form has become remarkably consistent, and the race starts that often bogged him down at the start of the year have become much cleaner.

But Silverstone also showed glimpses into the 19-year-old's mentality that can only be described as that of a champion. Antonelli had made the most of an unconventionally late pit stop to reel in race leader Leclerc to within three seconds when disaster struck his front wheel guard. Two unfortunate pit stops failed to completely resolve the problem and the Italian was reduced to 10th place, driving a car that refused to turn. Much more seasoned drivers than him would have been tempted to give up and retire from the race, but Antonelli insisted on persevering in an ultimately failed bid to rescue the final championship point awarded in the race. Losing 25 championship points at Silverstone, in addition to the 18 points he lost in Barcelona two races ago, is a difficult pill to swallow for anyone. But Mercedes' teenage prodigy, who arguably remains the fastest driver on form currently, seems to be handling it with remarkable poise and maturity.

Last year, Max Verstappen's heroic comeback, which came heartbreakingly close to a fifth world title, earned him the moniker of "People's Champion" from the fans. Hearing Antonelli on the radio, pleading with his team to be allowed to race on for 10th place, has endeared him to fans as potentially this year's People's Champion.

5) FIA, Please Don't Ruin F1

Almost five years on, Abu Dhabi 2021 continues to be a blot in the annals of F1 history. What was meant to be a fitting finale to one of the greatest championship showdowns the sport had ever seen, and a passing-of-the-torch moment between two of its greats, became (and remains) a talking point for incompetence at best and accusations of bias and racism at worst, thanks to the controversial handling of the Safety Car in the final laps of the race. The last thing the British GP needed was an anticlimactic throwback to that race, as if to remind everyone that the FIA remains as competent as ever when it comes to ruining a dramatic finish for the fans.

Ironically, the FIA received a volley of abuse at the end of Silverstone 2026 for doing precisely the opposite of Abu Dhabi 2021, sticking to the rulebook to the letter and directing the Safety Car to come back into the pits only on the lap after all the lapped cars had finished unlapping themselves, even if it meant finishing the race under Safety Car conditions. But what particularly angered fans was the bait-and-switch message of the Safety Car seemingly coming in at the end of the penultimate lap, raising the tantalising prospect of a last-lap dash for glory, only for that message to be rescinded moments later. The explanation of a "software error" found few takers. If drivers cannot cite software glitches as mitigation for mistakes such as a false start, which incidentally earned Hamilton a five-second penalty, why should the governing body be held to a lower standard?

More uncomfortably for the FIA, Silverstone has once again dragged Abu Dhabi 2021 back into the conversation. If the rulebook had to be followed to the letter this time, why was it interpreted so differently then? Formula 1 cannot keep revisiting the same controversy every time a Safety Car procedure becomes a talking point. Five years on, that remains as much an indictment of the FIA as it does a reminder of one of the sport's most contentious nights.