THE BIG PICTURE: It's gone back to a one team, two driver battle. But, oh, what a battle it is.

EVENT: Signed through 2041. Old style track. Beautiful area. Solid fans. Can produce great racing. What's not to like about this event?

TRACK: Fast, short, lots of traffic. It makes the drivers work.

QUALIFYING: Norris puts his foot down hard, Leclerc surprise McLaren by splitting them, Hamilton has to be happy, Russell is off pace from last race, Verstappen can not work miracles at this track, Bortoleto stuns the field, Lawson is the top Red Bull qualifier, Williams struggles, and Tsunoda fails again.

RACE: Now this is racing! What an amazing duel for the first 20 laps. And the remaining 50 still produced a cat and mouse game coupled with hard nosed battles throughout the field. Fun all around.

START: Leclerc gets a good start but Norris blocks him off allowing Piastri to slip into second, all while Antonelli does a rookie mistake locking up and punting Verstappen out of the race.

NORRIS: Redemption. Again. Now, how about some consistency.

PIASTRI: They delayed his first stop to offset tire usage for presumably newer tires than Norris in the final set. So, why did they throw that strategy out and pit him one lap later than Norris the second time? It makes no sense.

MCLAREN: Like Mercedes years ago, letting their drivers race. Except this time, they run even closer.

FERRARI: Good news, bad news. The new floor upgrade worked as they were clearly the second fastest car. But they are still miles behind McLaren.

MERCEDES: It turns out hot temperatures is still their weakness.

LAWSON: Top Red Bull employed qualifier. Top Red Bull employed finisher. Sure, there were circumstances to help that and Liam did gamble on the one-stop strategy. But he desparately needed a solid weekend, and Liam was finally able to deliver one.

HADJAR: While Isack had too many things go wrong this time around.

RACING BULLS: Put Verstappen in one of these cars. Just to see. Come on, do it...

ALONSO: The teacher schooled the student.

BORTELETO: If it wasn't for the McLaren duo, we would all be talking about Gabriel. And rightfully so. Outstanding qualifying and a solid race.

HULKENBERG: From 20th to ninth. Not too shabby.

SAUBER: Remember when they were like, the absolute slowest team around?

GASLY: Pierre hated that race.

COLAPINTO: Franco got an extension, but on a race by race basis, with pressure to do better.

ALPINE: Which is making it quite obvious Alpine has no desire to make Colapinto ... or Doohan ... their long term solution.

BOTTAS: Thus, enter the rumors that Valtteri may end up in an Alpine. This year!

SAINZ: You can't get anymore seized than that.

WILLIAMS: A weekend to forget. They typically do well at Silverstone, so they are going to be scrambling to correct these issues.

DUNNE: An outstanding showing in FP1 for McLaren. They may have some tough decision making down the road concerning Alex.

F2: In the sprint race, the top two swapped positions before Spaniard Josep Maria Martí finally took the win with crazy crashes behind them. Dutchman Richard Verschoor defeated Alex Dunne in the feature race, leapfrogging the Irishman into the points lead. Then Dunne was DQ'ed on a technical infraction, extending Verschoor's newly claimed lead to 24 points.

F3: This time, a technical infraction DQ cost the winner of the feature race, Nikola Tsolov. The win went to Norwegian Martinius Stenshorne. Australian James Wharton won his first F3 race, albeit the reverse grid sprint from pole.

WORD OF THE WEEKEND: Dicing.

STAT OF THE WEEKEND: 31 -- The fourth longest point streak in F1 history came to an end when Verstappen was knocked out of the race. Max holds the second longest streak at 43, while Hamilton has the record (48) and third longest (33). Oscar Piastri now has the longest active streak at 29.

HISTORICAL STAT OF THE WEEKEND: Gabriel Bortoleto became the 21st Brazilian driver to score F1 points. The first was Francisco Sacco "Chico" Landi who competed in six grands prix in the 1950s, retiring in half of them. In his last race, the 1956 Argentinian GP, he shared the drive with Gerino Gerini. They drove their Maserati to a fourth place finish, six laps behind the winners (which was also a shared drive between Luigi Musso and Juan Manual Fangio in a Ferrari), so each got awarded 1.5 points.

TWEET OF THE WEEKEND: @RyanErikKing:

I fear for Kimi Antonelli's life after taking out Max Verstappen at the Red Bull Ring. I'll smuggle him across the border in the dead of night like the Von Trapps.
#F1 | #AustrianGP

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: When Franco Colapinto pushed Oscar Piastri into the grass and nearly into the wall, Piastri dryly said, "Alpine still managed to find a way to fuck me over all these years later, huh."

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND RUNNERUP: Christian Horner really nailed the amazing advantage McLaren has over the field, "They've managed to create a car that really protects its tires very well and obviously has a good balance. I can't see any other car that would be able to follow that closely and not grain the front tires or the rear tires. I don't really understand."

SCHEDULE: So many British centric storylines heading into Silverstone. And if it's cool (or even rainy), there may be a lot of teams vying for excellent finishes.

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