Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2021 Styrian GP

Pierre Gasly (Retired, Lap 1): 8/10
After a great start to the weekend by going second fastest in Friday morning practice, Pierre Gasly was unfortunately sidelined in the afternoon as the team was forced to carry out a precautionary power unit change on the AlphaTauri. That didn't stop Gasly bouncing back in final practice where he was in the top six, and he also excelled in qualifying with a strong run into the final round and to sixth on the grid. Everything was set fair for a good race on Sunday but unfortunately he got clipped by Charles Leclerc at the start and ran into Antonio Giovinazzi on the opening lap, and the extensive damage to the car's left rear wheel meant there was nothing he could do except limp home to pit lane and retire. A shame, and a promising opportunity lost for Gasly through little fault of his own.

George Russell (Retired, lap 36): 9/10
It's no longer just qualifying where George Russell is excelling these days: he was 15th, 16th and 14th in the three practice sessions on Friday and on Saturday morning, and so we were fully expecting him to continue his run of Q2 appearances in the afternoon. But in fact he came within eight thousandths of a second from going one step beyond into the final round. While that was agonisingly close, it worked out well for Russell when he was promoted to tenth on the grid as a result of Yuki Tsunoda's penalty, with a free choice of tyres for the race. A solid start coupled with incidents for Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc saw him running in eighth place and it looked as though he was finally on his way to earning his first points for Williams. And then the air went out of the balloon - or rather, out of the pneumatic pressure system of the FW43B. Nothing the pit crew could do could fix the problem, and on lap 36 Russell was being pushed back into the garage with his dreams dashed. On the other hand, his reputation in the paddock has rarely been higher.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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