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Max Verstappen beats Charles Leclerc to win Austrian Grand Prix

SPIELBERG, Austria — Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the Austrian Grand Prix after beating Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in a wheel-banging battle of the 21-year-olds on Sunday, subject to a Formula One stewards' enquiry. The Dutchman's victory for the second year in a row at Spielberg also dealt champions Mercedes their first defeat of the season. Verstappen seized the lead from Leclerc, who had led from pole position, two laps from the end with the dueling pair making contact into the tight uphill turn three as the crowd roared. Race stewards investigated the contact after the race, and ultimately cleared Verstappen. He crossed the line, acclaimed by thousands of orange-shirted Dutch fans at a circuit owned by Red Bull, 2.7 seconds ahead of the Monegasque. The pair were the sport's youngest ever top two. Valtteri Bottas was third for Mercedes, who saw their streak of 10 successive wins — eight this season — come to an end. Championship-leading teammate Lewis Hamilton, winner of the previous four races, finished fifth and behind Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. Five-times world champion Hamilton remains well in front in the standings, 31 clear of Finland's Bottas after nine of 21 races. HONDA FIRST The victory was the first for a Honda-powered car since Britain's Jenson Button won in Hungary in 2006 for the Japanese manufacturer's own team, and a welcome antidote to last weekend's dull French Grand Prix. Verstappen, now with six career wins, was also the last driver to beat Mercedes — in the Mexican Grand Prix last October. "For Honda to win again here is incredible," said the youngster, who had to fight back from eighth at the end of the first lap after getting bogged down on the front row at the start. The Red Bull came into a league of its own after the pitstops with Verstappen scything through the field one car at a time and then chasing down Leclerc. "After that start, I thought the race was over," said Verstappen. "It's hard racing, otherwise we have to stay at home. If those things are not allowed in racing, then what's the point of being in Formula One," he added when asked about the summons. The Monegasque, forced wide as Verstappen went through, said he would let the stewards decide. "On the incident for me it was pretty clear in the car," he said. "I don't know what it looked like from the outside but we'll see what the decision is.

LaFerrari XX prototype pushed so hard that its suspension fails

Ferrari has a real challenge on its hands. It made the new LaFerrari hybrid hypercar so extreme already that it left little room to crank it up to 11 and turn it into an XX development prototype like it did with the Enzo and the 599 before it. So it's really going to have to push the envelop to take it that extra step.
That's what it has apparently set out to do with this LaFerrari prototype at Monza, where the Prancing Horse marque was spotted preparing the upcoming LaFerrari XX. In fact, testers ran the prototype so hard that they broke the car's right rear suspension. Which is bound to happen, we guess, when you try to find that extra bit of performance in a vehicle that's already one of the most capable ever devised, but only goes to show how much deeper Ferrari will have to dig to find that even sharper edge.
Either that or Ferrari's working on some sort of four-wheel steering system with automatic camber adjustment... See for yourself in the video below.

Ferrari hybrid V8 arriving next year, could power Ferrari SUV

Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne told Auto Express that the world can expect a V8 hybrid from Maranello next year. He said, "The test mules are out now," but what he wouldn't tell the Brit mag is where that V8 hybrid will go. Everything else in Ferrari's lineup has been recently introduced or refreshed save for the 488, but the 488 is just two years old. With all of the current cars ruled out, the bettors wager on the hybrid V8 appearing in the Ferrari SUV that's also due next year. We've no idea how Maranello engineers will structure the electrical assistance, but Marchionne indicated "more of a traditional hybrid [than the LaFerrari] to fulfill a different role." That means a strictly performance-based kinetic energy recovery system likely steps aside for one that will "yield additional performance" as well as better fuel economy. In further comments to Top Gear — where he expressed a touch of disappointment in the firm's GT car designs and the possibility of a 250 GTO continuation — Marchionne said, "The hybrid element will be much more of a mainstay of the powertrain than it was in the LaFerrari." Look out for plug-in charging and some kind of all-electric range. If all of this speculation holds up come 2019, it also means the Ferrari SUV will reverse its competitors' playbooks — the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus, for instance, established themselves with their mightiest powertrains, then got around to plug-in hybrid models. A hybrid SUV would be smart, as we're coming up on an emission target escalation in 2020. Those targets only apply to carmakers selling more than 10,000 units per year, Ferrari sold nearly 8,400 cars last year and aims to crack 9,000 sales this year. The SUV will certainly put the Prancing Horse over the 10K barrier, and as a volume seller, relatively speaking, will make a worthwhile contribution to emissions values. Of course, you have to write Marchionne's quips in pencil, because they're prone to revision. It was only two years ago when Marchionne answered a question about the mere possibility of an SUV with, "You have to shoot me first." Later that same year, Marchionne said every Ferrari sold from 2019 onward would have some sort of hybrid element.