Austrian Grand Prix: Preview

Austria, home to late great champions Jochen Rindt and Niki Lauda, has a strong bond with Formula 1. Its inaugural world championship event took place at Zeltweg’s airfield in 1964 and six years later the country returned at the spectacular Österreichring, a sweeping circuit in the bucolic Styrian valleys above the commune of Spielberg.

Austria’s grand prix bade farewell in 1987 before reappearing a decade later at a truncated version of the Österreichring, dubbed the A1-Ring, though the event’s rejuvenation lasted only seven seasons. Red Bull stepped in to acquire the circuit and renovated the facility, retaining the A1-Ring layout, with the renamed Red Bull Ring welcoming Formula 1 back to the mountains in 2014. At only 4.3km, and with just 10 corners, it is one of the shortest circuits on Formula 1’s calendar, facilitating exceptionally close lap times in qualifying, while in race trim there are bountiful overtaking opportunities across its undulating layout.



For the third successive season Austria will also host F1 Sprint, the third of six iterations in 2024, following on from China and Miami.

The Austrian Grand Prix has previously been a prosperous event for MoneyGram Haas F1 Team. The squad’s best result was achieved in 2018, when Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen finished fourth and fifth respectively. Another double points finish came in 2022 while last year Nico Hulkenberg ran as high as second during F1 Sprint before classifying a strong sixth, the team’s best result in a challenging 2023 campaign. 




Mark Slade - Race Engineer:

“One of the main things about the Red Bull Ring is that it’s a very short lap so it gets busy, particularly in practice and qualifying. It’s a nice mixture of low-, medium-, and high-speed corners, and obviously in a spectacular setting so it looks amazing, and it does provide quite a significant challenge for us when setting the car up. We’ve had some issues with medium-speed corners, so we’re expecting to have to manage that, it’s going to be a challenge for us, but on the other hand in low-speed corners, we’ve generally been very good at them and we think we’ve taken a step forward in high-speed corners recently. We’ll see how we get on, but we’ve got a plan of course.

“There is a lot of extra work for a Sprint, especially in amongst a triple-header, but it also makes it very interesting, it’s all a part of Formula 1. You have to be realistic that you’re not going to be able to do everything you’d like to do with one practice session, so you have to pick the most important points that you think are relevant to getting the best out of the car in both the Sprint and the race and work to achieve those objectives – it’s a very compressed, highly edited run plan. The format of a Sprint is different from previous years, so you can afford to be a little bit more experimental in the Sprint race because points only go to eighth place, and realistically we’re chasing that last points-paying position so it means we can try things that we wouldn’t necessarily have tried, knowing we can change things for the race.”



Nico Hulkenberg:

“It’s a short track that packs in a lot of fun. The length of the circuit means it bunches us all up over qualifying, which is a challenge, but we have two opportunities as it’s a Sprint. Last year I scored points around the Red Bull Ring, so I know it can be done, and we want to be back scoring points, so that’s the mission in Spielberg.”



Kevin Magnussen:

“It’s a fun track; I’ve got some good memories from the Red Bull Ring, that’s where we’ve had our best team result so I’m looking forward to going there again. We have quite an efficient car so hopefully with our good straight-line speed we can be good there. There’s still a fair number of high-speed corners, which is perhaps not our strength, but we seem to be pretty consistently good at most tracks. I’m just looking forward to a fun Sprint weekend.”