By Alan Baldwin
(Reuters) -Max Verstappen won Red Bull’s home Austrian Grand Prix from pole position and with the fastest lap on Sunday for the team’s 10th successive Formula One victory and ninth in nine races this season.
Verstappen, who also won Saturday’s 100km sprint race and leaves Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring with maximum points, stretched his lead over Mexican team mate Sergio Perez to 81 points with his fifth win in a row.
It was also the Dutch driver’s seventh of a dominant campaign taking him ever closer to a third title.
Charles Leclerc was second, five seconds adrift, for Ferrari’s milestone 800th podium while Perez fought from 15th at the start to third in a race littered with time penalties as drivers repeatedly exceeded the track limits.
“Amazing race, the car was on fire today,” said Verstappen, whose victory was the 42nd of his career and one more than the late Brazilian great Ayrton Senna.
It was also his fifth success at the Red Bull Ring, more than any driver, and left him more than three race wins clear of Perez.
“I’m just enjoying the moment driving this car and working with this team. The Sprint weekend is always hectic and a lot of things can go wrong but luckily a lot of things went right,” said Verstappen.
It was still not a perfect afternoon for the 25-year-old, however, with his phenomenal run of 249 successive race laps led ending on lap 26 when he pitted and Leclerc took over at the front.
Verstappen passed the Monegasque for the lead on lap 35 of 71 and then pulled away, having so much time in the bag that he pitted on the penultimate lap for soft tyres to take the fastest lap bonus point from Perez.
Carlos Sainz was fourth for Ferrari, with Lando Norris fifth for McLaren and Fernando Alonso sixth for Aston Martin.
Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton was seventh for Mercedes, with team mate George Russell eighth, and Pierre Gasly was ninth for Alpine.
Lance Stroll took the final point for Aston Martin.
Hamilton was one of a string of drivers shown a black and white warning flag for going beyond the white lines with all four wheels, collecting a five second penalty.
“I can’t keep it on the track, the car won’t turn,” Hamilton, who had passed Norris for fourth at the start to slot in behind the Ferraris, told his team when warned about the violation.
Sainz and Gasly both also collected five second penalties, along with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, Williams’ Alex Albon and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda.
Nico Hulkenberg was the only retirement, the German pulling off and stopping on lap 14 with smoke coming from the engine of his Haas.
“I lost power,” he said.
A minute’s silence was held before the start in respect of 18-year-old Dutch driver Dilano van’t Hoff who died in a junior series race at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit on Saturday.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Christian Radnedge)
