George Russell delivered a dominant performance at the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday, winning from pole position and narrowing the Formula One championship gap between himself and Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli to just 40 points.
Max Verstappen, who had crashed during qualifying and was forced to start from fifth on the grid, managed to fight his way to a second-place finish at his Red Bull team’s home track in Spielberg, Austria — ending up 1.6 seconds behind Russell at the checkered flag. Antonelli came home third, just 0.3 seconds behind Verstappen, in a dramatic late charge to the finish line.
Sunday’s victory was Russell’s second of the 2025 season, having previously won the opening race in Australia. Mercedes has now taken seven wins from the first eight rounds of the campaign.
In the overall standings, Antonelli leads the drivers’ championship with 171 points, followed by Russell at 131. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton sits third with 125 points after finishing fifth on Sunday, a result that came after he had been running second and engaged in a fierce wheel-to-wheel battle with Verstappen during the race.
