Scuderia Ferrari HP endured a challenging Austrian Grand Prix, struggling for race pace from the opening laps. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were forced into a largely defensive race, with Lewis bringing home the ten points for fifth place, while Charles added four more by taking the chequered flag in eighth.

Both drivers made strong starts, with Hamilton passing Leclerc on the opening lap, but it soon became apparent that, on the Medium tyres, the two SF-26s were unable to match the pace of their closest rivals, dropping behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen. In an effort to fight with the cars ahead the team switched from a two to a three stop strategy which didn't work out. Lewis was eventually overtaken by Oscar Piastri and finished fifth, while Charles dropped behind Lando Norris and Isack Hadjar to take eighth place.

The data gathered over the 71 demanding laps at Spielberg will now be analysed carefully to identify the areas that need improving in order to ensure the team is once again competitive as it heads to Silverstone for next weekend's British Grand Prix, Lewis' home race.

Lewis Hamilton: It was an extremely hot and demanding race. I had some good battles at certain points and at the start of the race I thought maybe we were in with a good chance. The team did a great job with the pitstops but it's clear we're still struggling on the straights and tyre degradation was quite high, which in the end made things challenging.

Going into the race, we felt a three-stop strategy could have been in play due to the track temperatures. It's always difficult to know how things would have played out, but I don't think much more was possible, given where we were today. We've got a week until Silverstone and will look at everything we learnt and see what we can do there.

Charles Leclerc: We went with a setup direction similar to the one I ran here last year, and it worked out well in qualifying. In the race, it was less effective and I struggled mainly with the rear, which caused me to slide around quite a bit.

We had a strong weekend in terms of pace in Barcelona, so we know our upgrades worked. These new cars are very sensitive, so if you are not in the right window with the setup, you pay the consequence, and this is something we still have to learn more about and optimise going forward.

We have a lot of work to do ahead of Silverstone and I hope that we can come back stronger there as a team.

Fred Vasseur: It was a challenging weekend: I don't think we got it off on the right foot on Friday, as we struggled in both FP1 and FP2 and weren't able to complete proper long runs. We recovered well over a single lap in qualifying, but we probably didn't prepare the race as well as we should have. Looking back, we were perhaps too focused on Mercedes today. We pushed hard in the opening laps and then reacted too aggressively with the strategy, trying to stay with them when, realistically, that wasn't our race. We will learn from this, refocus on ourselves and immediately turn our attention to the British Grand Prix next week.