Valtteri Bottas wins Austrian Grand Prix

Mercedes Valtteri Bottas drove a masterly race to securely victory – his second season in Austrian Grand Prix, finishing just 0.6s ahead of world championship leader Sebastian Vettel for Ferrari. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was third after fending off Mercedes Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages.

Kimi Raikkonen took a distant fifth in the second Ferrari, with Romain Grosjean an excellent sixth for Haas. The Force India’s of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon were seventh and eighth, while Williams staged an impressive recovery with Felipe Massa and Lance Stroll – who started 17th and 18th respectively – completing the top ten. It was a dramatic beginning to the race. As Bottas made a getaway so good the stewards’ investigated a potential jump start, Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat braked too late into Turn 1 and ran into the fast-starting Fernando Alonso.

Much to the chagrin of Red Bull's Max Verstappen and his legion of orange-clad fans who sat watching in horror, Alonso's McLaren inadvertently collided with Verstappen, who spun. Verstappen and Alonso had sufficient damage that they were forced to retire. Kvyat continued, receiving a drive-through for his trouble. From there on, in many ways it was a rear-loaded race, with most of the action at the end. The Finn led easily from pole and dominated the first half of the race when the leaders were running Pirelli’s ultrasofts tyres – but once the switch to supersofts came it was a whole different story.

Jolyon Palmer’s best drive of the season saw him see off Renault partner Nico Hulkenberg, and just fail to beat Stroll to the final point by half a second. Stoffel Vandoorne was 12th in the other McLaren, penalized for ignoring blue flags, ahead of Hulkenberg, the Saubers of Pascal Wehrlein and Marcus Ericsson, and Kvyat. Carlos Sainz had to retire the sister Toro Rosso after falling dramatically from point’s contention early on with mechanical woes. The other retiree was Kevin Magnussen, who was hounding Palmer when he suffered hydraulic failure on his Haas. Vettel now has a 20-point lead heading into the British Grand Prix weekend, with 171 points to Hamilton’s 151, the closing Bottas on 136 and 107 for Ricciardo.