Red Bull Ring

The Red Bull Ring packs a lot into a short lap. Set in the Styrian mountains, it is essentially a run of straights linked by uphill and downhill corners, with big elevation changes that you feel far more from inside the car than on television. Because the lap is so short, the whole field is squeezed into tiny margins, and a small mistake costs places rather than tenths. Finding clear track in qualifying is a constant headache on so brief a lap.

Racing in the Austrian hills has a long heritage here, on ground that once hosted a far longer and faster circuit. The punchy, compact layout and frequent changes of gradient tend to produce close, aggressive racing and plenty of overtaking.