Our pick of the stars and flops of an Austrian Grand Prix that featured some big form turnarounds compared to the previous race.

Winner: Max Verstappen (2nd)

Verstappen might have come up 1.6s short of victory in the end, but it was his and Red Bull's most competitive Sunday of the season so far. 

Verstappen has had to watch Mercedes and Ferrari bring big upgrades that have taken them further away from Red Bull, but Austria was finally Verstappen's turn to be buoyed by a big development package. 

Whether the RB22 can be this strong at every circuit remains to be seen, but the Red Bull is certainly closer, and that gives the team an important 'pull' factor in its fight to keep Verstappen. - Josh Suttill

Loser: Kimi Antonelli (3rd)

If not the definitive quickest driver of the weekend then at least definitely in the conversation - so only getting third place will sting.

Antonelli seems quite aware this was a winnable grand prix, as evidenced by his rather self-flagellating post-race reaction that referenced mistakes driven by some sort of brake discomfort in the first lap and further into that first stint.

Had he ended up at least third rather than fifth following that opening sequence, the grand prix would have opened up to him. But it wasn't to be, and the time lost there was enough to consign him to a hopeless chase in the final metres.

Still. 40 points clear and not lacking pace. Could be worse! - Val Khorounzhiy

Winner: George Russell (1st)

Russell is still missing that 'total control' dominant win that would psychologically tip the momentum of the year. This weekend wasn't really it - his qualifying, even the whole yellow flag situation aside, was a work-in-progress until the very final runs, and the win looked under serious threat in the second phase of the race.

But it was also more comfortable than the 1.986s covering the top three made it look, and ultimately there will be no regrets whatsoever coming out with a 10-point swing in his favour over his team-mate, a round after an 18-point swing.

Russell - who has leapfrogged Lewis Hamilton to second in the standings here - still feels like he's rebuilding his season brick-by-brick but he's buying himself time in the process, and putting things back into his own hands. - VK

Loser: Ferrari (5th & 8th)

"They didn't look at all like they did in Barcelona" was Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff's summary of Ferrari, and it's hard to disagree. 

We didn't expect Ferrari to be able to pull off its Barcelona strategy masterclass again pre-race, but nobody expected Ferrari to be this far off, with lead Ferrari driver Hamilton 26.3s behind winner Russell.

That's despite the major engine upgrade Ferrari brought to Austria. Its debut fell flat, killing any momentum gained from its Barcelona victory. 

And Charles Leclerc looked especially off-colour, a further 19s behind Hamilton, without any of the obvious braking problems that explained his miserable Montreal and Monaco weekends. - JS

Loser: Lando Norris (7th)

Norris fell somewhere between nonplussed and disinterested in his immediate reaction to a seventh place in an Austrian GP where he was upstaged by team-mate Oscar Piastri.

The near-10-second gap between the two McLaren drivers isn't anything like the 35-second drubbing Norris dished out on Piastri last time out at Barcelona, but it was ultimately big enough for two cars - Hamilton's Ferrari and Isack Hadjar's Red Bull - to slot into. And you'd probably say based on the way Ferrari's challenge wilted and Hadjar's general deficit to Verstappen that those positions were recoverable.

Norris, for what it's worth, felt his race was lost in the pitstop phase when McLaren had to stop Piastri first to cover Hadjar, but accepted that's the way it goes sometimes - and that there was "not a lot to complain of otherwise".

So this wasn't the scale of defeat that the positional difference between the McLarens suggest, but the subdued tone of his answers was probably in keeping with the way his race played out. - Jack Cozens

Winner: Oscar Piastri (4th)

Piastri admitted he had a lot of "homework" to do after a difficult Barcelona GP in which he finished 35 seconds behind McLaren team-mate Norris. 

But it was Piastri's turn to deliver a thumping intra-team victory in Austria with a really solid drive to fourth.

McLaren clearly didn't have the pace to match Verstappen's Red Bull or the Mercedes duo, so Piastri did a good job to beat one Red Bull, both Ferraris and Norris (convincingly). - JS

Loser: Cadillac (DNF & DNF)

The extent of Cadillac's technical issues on Friday, which then bled into Saturday morning on Valtteri Bottas's car, probably indicated a double-DNF might not have been the greatest surprise ever.

Even so, failing to get either car past five laps before overheating brakes curtailed their progress was a pretty galling showing. - JC

Winner: Racing Bulls (9th & 10th)

This was about as 'no notes' a performance as you could ask for.

Racing Bulls repeated its best-of-the-rest trick from qualifying in the race and was never troubled by the opposition - as the 11-second gap between Arvid Lindblad and Audi's Gabriel Bortoleto behind him in 11th showed.

In truth, once Liam Lawson had stopped reporting that his car was on fire, the only real moment of note was the team's decision to undercut Lawson back past Lindblad at their final stops. (And then order the two to hold position.)

So on a sweltering hot day, the only real downside was that the potential for unreliability didn't mean there were more points up for grabs for such a well-executed race. - JC

Losers: The rest of the midfield

Great reliability from the 'big four' and controlled execution from the Racing Bulls meant points were an impossibility for the Bulls' midfield rivals - whichever way the strategies turned and however they were able to utilise the virtual safety car periods as pitstop opportunities.

The Alpine, which had come alive on Sunday at Barcelona after a subpar qualifying, steadfastly refused to do that here and appeared to get precious little out of an upgraded front wing. The Audi was OK but just outmatched. Haas plainly did not have the car all through the weekend.

And while Williams has to be considered an honorary member of the midfield by virtue of its position and points tally in the constructors' standings, the FW48 is only a true 'midfield' car when it feels like it. Underdeveloped, draggy and still overweight, its only true contributions here was creating the VSCs through Carlos Sainz's pit straight stoppage and Alex Albon's assault on the Turn 3 bollard. - VK