Wehrlein comes from last to secure 'amazing' point

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Pascal Wehrlein described his first ever point in F1 as an "amazing" result having been in last place and a lap down at one stage of the Austrian Grand Prix.

Having qualified 12th in the Manor, Wehrlein needed to two-stop due to tyre wear and had just taken his second stop to switch from ultrasofts to soft tyres when Sebastian Vettel crashed and the safety car was deployed. The second stop had dropped him a lap down, and although Wehrlein was allowed to unlap himself he was still 12 seconds adrift of the field at the restart.

"Under these circumstances, it feels great," Wehrlein said. "In the middle of the race I was thinking the race was done because we were so unlucky with the safety car.

"But I kept pushing and tried to manage my tyres because I didn’t want to stop again and in the end I was fighting with [Valtteri] Bottas and [Esteban] Gutierrez and the team told me you need to keep Gutierrez behind you. He is on fresh tyres but you need to keep him behind and you can maybe score a point. It was a tough race at the end."

Running 11th in the closing laps, Wehrlein was putting pressure on Bottas for the final point but was promoted to 10th on the final lap when Sergio Perez crashed ahead of them.

"When I crossed the start-finish line, I looked at the screen and I saw my name in P10 and I thought it must have been Perez. I asked the team, I was lapped and I wasn’t sure what the rule is. So I asked if we managed to finish P10 or P11 and they said P10. Amazing."

Wehrlein had been attempting to pass Bottas on track for the final point but admits he felt it was going to be a tall order despite the impressive pace his car was showing.

"I was hoping to get a crazy scenario when [Nico] Rosberg and [Lewis] Hamilton were coming [to lap them], but otherwise it would have been difficult to overtake because he had 10 laps on the supersoft tyres and I was 40 laps on the soft tyre. I was still able to fight with him so it was a great performance of the car."

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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.