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On Sunday, F1 fans were treated to an absolutely spectacular season opener at Spielberg. There was drama from start to end. In an exhilarating race along with many retirements and yellow flags, where Mercedes emerged as the winning constructor.

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As far as drivers are concerned, Valtteri Bottas bagged his 8th Grand Prix win, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished in second place while McLaren’s Lando Norris ended the race in P3.

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It was a maiden podium finish for the 20-year-old Norris. One that he will cherish forever. However, this wasn’t the only ‘maiden’ thing to take place in Austria.

Here is an interesting bit of trivia, brought to you by the 7-times constructors’ champions, Mercedes.

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Sunday’s Austrian GP marked the only time Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren have ever finished on a podium together

It seems like Mercedes F1 had to dig deep into the F1 archives, to unearth this gem of a statistic. They put out this bit of trivia on their official Twitter account.

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The Tweet read, “A crazy piece of #TuesdayTrivia! Sunday was the first time in F1 history that Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari have shared the podium together.”

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Considering the success that these three teams have had, this trivia really blows your mind. Just to throw in some numbers, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have won the Constructor’s title, a mind-boggling 30 times!

It’s really surprising that this trio has never been seen by fans on the same podium before.

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All three teams had different levels of success in the season opener. Mercedes were on the course to bagging a P1 and 2 after Bottas took pole, followed by Lewis Hamilton.

However, the latter was given a 5-second time penalty for causing a collision with Red Bull’s Alex Albon. It meant that Hamilton was forced to yield his podium to McLaren’s Norris.

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As for McLaren, Austria was a massive success, apart from Norris finishing P3, Carlos Sainz also had a strong race and finished in P5.

However, for Ferrari, it was a bittersweet occasion. Charles Leclerc drove the race of his life (by his own admission) but his teammate, Sebastian Vettel finished the race, at a measly 10th position.

Teams, drivers and fans alike, will now be looking forward to the second race, which will also be held at Spielberg in the coming weekend. Let’s hope it proves to be another belter.

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Ronan Carvalho

1,063 Articles

Ronan Carvalho is senior F1 author for Essentiallysports. Ronan is currently pursuing his Journalism degree from St. Xavier's College. Being an experienced voice on the sport, he has nearly 1000 Formula 1 articles to his name. Having fallen in love with cars at a young age, he soon became an ardent lover of the F1 series and claims Kimi Raikkonen to be his favourite driver and Spa to be his favorite track, thanks in a large part to the thrill of watching cars go through Radillon (yes, not Eau Rouge). However, he doesn't let his biases get in the way of his writing, delivering objective and precise articles to fans of the sport both new and old.

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