Mercedes changes strategy after Red Bull pit stop failure

For the first time since the Spanish Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas managed to get on the podium in Austria. It was his fourth podium finish of the season. Sergio Perez, however, was close behind him.

Perez comes up just short

Perez was half a second short of Bottas at the finish. The Mexican hoped to pull off a similar stunt to Verstappen in France with a second pit stop, but fell just a lap or two short. "I was quite far ahead of him, until the last lap, but then I could see him in the mirrors," Bottas said opposite Motorsport.com. "But you can't really overtake here in sectors two and three. So once I got out of sector one without any mistakes with the bad tyres I had, I knew I had to succeed."

Reaction to failed pit stop

The Finn, who started fifth, managed to get past Lando Norris at the start of the race before attacking Perez. However, things went wrong for the Red Bull driver at the pit stop on the 26th lap. The stop lasted 4.8 seconds, much longer than usual for Red Bull. Mercedes reacted immediately by bringing Bottas in on the next lap.

Something the Finn says was not the original strategy. "As a team we did a good job of staying ahead of him. They had a slow pit stop I think and we reacted pretty well by stopping at that point, even though we didn't intend to. That was good. At least we deprive them of some points." Bottas is currently fifth in the championship with 74 points, his worst start to a season in his time driving for Mercedes.