Rosberg steps up in Austria

Star of the race and winner:

Nico Rosberg won the Austrian Grand Prix for Mercedes, beating his team mate Lewis Hamilton with what was quite a dominating performance. He was the quicker silver arrows driver all weekend, only losing out on pole position because of a storming lap by Hamilton.

Nico quickly rectified this with a fantastic start that catapulted him into the lead by turn one. Lewis launched a response immediately, he challenged down the outside into turn two and three but Rosberg placed his car well, expertly defending his lead. 

From then on he held Lewis at arms length, there was to be no real challenge from the championship leader and as Rosberg reeled off the laps Lewis fell back especially after he was issued with a five second penalty for crossing the pit lane exit line. Nico complained of a vibration towards the end of the race but his team urged caution and he crossed the line with plenty in hand.

It was his most convincing display to date and gives renewed hope that we can see a proper championship fight. Nico now lies only 10 points back, but with Silverstone next up, Lewis will be hoping home advantage gets him quickly back to winning ways. It's still too early to tell if Rosberg can consistently challenge but three wins from the last four races isn't a bad way to go.

The battles

Plenty of battles to get excited about, Pastor Maldonado and Max Verstappen was a particular highlight. Max came under further accusation of being too aggressive, but the stewards deemed all was fair so there's nothing to complain about.

Formula 1 needs drivers who are not afraid to take it to the edge and Verstappen is certainly one of those. Eventually Pastor got through after a massive tank slapper nearly sent him into the wall, but he held it and Verstappen went off, helping the Lotus claim seventh with Verstappen demoted to eighth where they finished.

The other Lotus driver Romain Grosjean had a terrific four corner wheel to wheel battle with Felipe Nasr, brilliantly executed. Daniel Ricciardo got in on the action towards the end of the race too, but his Red Bull was atrocious all weekend and he could only manage 10th at the finish.

Valtteri Bottas' Williams also made some good moves albeit mostly DRS assisted, Nico Hulkenberg being his victim twice as they both mixed it up with cars on different strategies. Le Mans 24 hours winner Hulkenberg was outstanding all weekend, hyped by his first win since GP2 in 2009. However, he couldn't hold onto his fifth starting position finishing up sixth behind Bottas. His team mate Sergio Perez finished up ninth after not being able to match his team mate at all.

Things of note

Felipe Massa picked up where Bottas left off in Canada by knicking a podium off Ferrari, this time Sebastian Vettel being held up by a dodgy pit stop. Vettel came back at the Williams driver but couldn't get on terms with him. Ferrari had looked quick all weekend up until qualifying, and in the race just could sustain the pace of the Mercedes.

Kimi Raikkonen started down the grid after Ferrari failed to tell him the session was about to end. He made a great start, but seemed to lose it as his car spun it's wheels out of turn two and clattered into Fernando Alonso's McLaren which ended up sitting on top of the Ferrari, both were out but also unharmed after a pretty shocking accident resulting in the safety car.

Again another pretty bad weekend for Kimi, he'd looked quick in practice but he can't get a clean weekend. It also just seems Ferrari flatter to deceive at the moment which is more than can be said of McLaren who couldn't flatter to deceive anything.

Another wretched weekend for the team with both drivers receiving penalty after penalty for failed bits of the power unit. Both Alonso and Button started from the back and also had to take penalties once the race started. Alonso didn't get far enough for it to matter while Button was out soon after he took his. McLaren have a good car, but Honda is just embarrassing at the moment. How can they be so woefully unprepared? To be fair of all Honda's forays into F1 since the 60s they've only been successful in one period in the late 80s and early 90s. Any other time they've been involved in the sport has ended with little or no success, so is there current situation really that surprisng?

Having said that, Renault are faced with similar problems with Red Bull being issued with many penalties too. These rules need to change as, engines should be allowed to be developed if you're too far behind and there surely has to be a better way than giving teams which are already struggling even more woe.

Which brings us on to the racing because most of this season has been full of woe. In general I don't think there's much wrong with the product F1 has to offer, but this season has been entirely uninspired so far with not a single out standing race to shout about. Perhaps there does need to be a shake up of the rules, but what would really do us some good is if the other teams could get a handle on these rules as well as Mercedes have. If they could do that then we'd be in business.

The title chase

Of course the competitive order won't matter so much if Rosberg can get on the tail of Lewis and really hound him. It remains to be seen if that will be the case, but Silverstone will let us know if Rosberg can only produce a sporadic challenge or be consistently giving him some pain.

all photos taken from autosport.com