A Brief History of the F1 Austrian Grand Prix

Arthur Viana, July 7th, 2022.

This Sunday (10) the 2022 F1 Austrian Grand Prix will take place at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. It will be the 11th round of the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship and in addition, the grid will be defined by a Sprint Race.

Being on and off the F1 calendar for several years, this will be the 35th time the category will race the Austrian GP. The race made its debut in the 1960s but has had several hiatuses over the decades. However, the Austrian GP has taken place uninterruptedly since 2014.

Because some GPs were cancelled in the last two seasons due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Red Bull Ring has hosted another race in addition to the Austrian GP. It was the Styrian GP, which will not happen again this year.

The History

The Austrian GP has been a part of F1 for a long time, and only one race has not been held at Spielberg. That was the 1964 Austrian GP, won by Ferrari and Lorenzo Bandini and which was held at the Zeltweg Airfield, a circuit built in a military airport and that was not very successful. The circuit held other championship races, but F1 never went back there.

After 1964, F1 would only bring back the Austrian GP in 1970, at the legendary ?sterreichring, in Spielberg. It was a big and very fast track with several long straights. However, even though the spectacle was great for the fans, these exact features started to raise concerns related to the safety of the drivers. American driver Mark Donohue had already died in an accident at the 1975 Austrian GP, while other categories also saw a number of deaths and heavy crashes in different parts of the circuit. Therefore, the track had to be redesigned. Some of the greatest drivers who won the Austrian GP in this era are Emerson Fittipaldi, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and Nigel Mansell, while the only drivers who got more than one victory were Alan Jones (2) and Prost (3).

Out of the F1 calendar for 1988, the Austrian GP would only return in the 1997 season. Redesigned by the famous Hermann Tilke, the track had a shorter and safer layout, so, the now called A1-Ring (for sponsorship reasons) was part of F1 until 2003. The winners from this period are Jacques Villeneuve, Mika Hakkinen (2), Eddie Irvine, David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher (2). However, renovations to the stands left the circuit without use in 2004.

That's when another hiatus came. Discussions were created about what to do with the circuit and for years it was practically inactive. Until Red Bull, the company that owns the circuit, decided to invest heavily in renovations again. The track was only restored and renamed, without any major changes to the layout. With that, in 2013, they finally made a deal with F1 to bring the GP back in 2014, at the new Red Bull Ring. Since then, the Austrian GP has been one of the main attractions of the F1 season. The winners of the new Austrian GP era are Nico Rosberg (2), Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas (2) and Max Verstappen (3).