Red Bull humiliated as Mercedes dominate and Hamilton impresses
Monday 23 June 2014 12:38, UK
Red Bull left humiliated as Mercedes dominate at the Red Bull Ring – Fleet Street have their say on the Austrian GP.
While Mercedes claimed their sixth one-two finish of the season in Austria, just as much attention was focused on the struggles of Red Bull at their home race.
The Times led with the headline ‘Rosberg runs rings around the Red Bulls to extend lead'. Despite neither Mercedes car starting on the front-row for the first time in 2014, Kevin Eason wrote that ‘in the end it was another fairly easy win, a reflection of the team’s overwhelming superiority’.
That was not the glorious homecoming Red Bull had planned when the race returned to the calendar with Eason adding that the Silver Arrows ‘had smashed up Red Bull’s metaphorical china shop'.
‘The rampant Red Bulls of the past turned up on the lush home ground of the Styrian mountains like a bunch of clapped-out old cows destined for the knacker’s yard,' he continued. 'Of the four cars Red Bull fielded, including two from their Toro Rosso junior team, only one finished.’
Jonathan McEvoy echoed his sentiments in the Daily Mail: ‘There were only three retirements on Sunday with all sporting Red Bull branding on their liveries at the Red Bull Ring. That wasn't in the script when Dietrich Mateschitz parted with his millions to bring Formula 1 back to Austria.’
In The Daily Telegraph, Daniel Johnson’s opinion was that ‘at Red Bull’s home race he [Sebastian Vettel] and the team were humiliated after another engine calamity forced his third retirement of the year. It was enough for his Team Principal, Christian Horner, to issue a fierce warning to Renault for what he deemed their “unacceptable” performance,’ whilst The Guardian’s Paul Weaver penned that ‘in their “home” race Red Bull also had an anticlimactic time'.
With Williams the only team able to even get close to Mercedes and the traditional power houses of Ferrari and McLaren anonymous once more, The Times added that fans of F1's traditional titans could question where the huge financial outlay is being spent.
‘In a sport in which teams measures their budgets in tens of millions of pounds, the packed house of 90,000 fans basking in the sunshine would be entitled to ask what they were all spending it on,’ Eason wrote.
‘Where were Ferrari, the royalty of Formula 1, in all of this, or McLaren, the team who like to think that they are among the grandees of sport? Fernando Alonso led for half a dozen laps but only while the leaders went off to the pits. That was the first time a Ferrari has led this season and the Spaniard had to settle for fifth place, while Kimi Raikkonen, his team-mate, was tenth. Jenson Button, the 2009 World Champion, was a distant 11th and Kevin Magnussen, his McLaren team-mate, seventh. So what?’
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s storm through the field from ninth to second was the subject of much praise with The Daily Telegraph stating that ‘for a time the race looked like it could be the Hamilton’s greatest triumph,’ whilst the Independent’s David Tremayne said that ‘Lewis Hamilton’s damage-limitation performance in Austria was a perfect confirmation of his latent speed and fighting spirit'.
