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If Sergio Perez hadn't suffered brake failure on the penultimate lap of the Austrian Grand Prix, Manor probably wouldn't be celebrating its second Formula 1 points finish.

But that doesn't mean Pascal Wehrlein's shock result was completely down to luck.

He finished right behind Valtteri Bottas's Williams, which is a consistent top-10 car on most circuits.

Wehrlein also managed to qualify inside the top 12 - the first time Manor has ever managed that in dry conditions.

Manor has improved vastly this season. But it reached a new level in Austria.

Marcus Ericsson said there was no way Sauber could have matched Wehrlein's 1m07.565s lap in Q1, where the German was also quicker than both Haas-Ferraris.

His qualifying performance, on the first F1 track he has previous racing experience of, was certainly worthy of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff's "special boy" tag.

This upswing looks sudden, but both Manor drivers felt they could have made Q2 at the previous race had Q1 not been so interrupted by yellow flags.

Wehrlein lost his brakes in the Baku race, but he was running ahead of the Renaults and scrapping with Haas beforehand, suggesting the Manor was a midfield car there too.

Baku was a circuit of long straights, short corners and smooth asphalt, which are all characteristics of the Red Bull Ring also.

The low-downforce nature of those circuits probably helped Manor, as faster teams were forced to trim downforce to be competitive.

Manor doesn't have a great deal to trim in the first instance, which brings the field back towards it.

But that's true of Canada also, and Manor was nowhere near as competitive in Montreal, which suggests there is more to it.

Wehrlein said he had "no idea" why Manor was so strong in Austria, but his Manor worked the soft tyre (which has a higher working range than the others used at the Red Bull Ring) particularly well over the last part of that race, allowing him to pull off a similar final stint length to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

Wehrlein kept pace with Bottas, whose car struggled on all compounds, bringing it in range of the Manor when ordinarily Williams should have been well up the road.

Working the tyres properly is a complicated mix of driving style, car set-up, circuit roughness, pressure and temperature - all affected by the prevailing atmospheric conditions, which are never constant.

That's why this is area of F1 science remains closer to a black art than most, and it's one Williams admits it needs to work harder to understand.

Haas generally hasn't enjoyed the smoother tracks, but has been working hard to better understand the tyres and in Austria Romain Grosjean enjoyed an excellent one-stop race to seventh.

Considering Wehrlein qualified between the Haas drivers, perhaps more than 10th was possible for Manor?

For even a remote chance of that Wehrlein would have needed to start on the super-soft tyre and try to match Grosjean's strategy.

As it was, Wehrlein used the ultra-soft for two stints early on and made two pitstops before the safety car emerged after Sebastian Vettel's tyre blowout.

Wehrlein thought this would ruin his race by giving rivals the chance to pit while the race was neutralised.

But earlier tyre choices reduced its impact.

Grosjean's long first stint on super-softs allowed him to take full advantage, while Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz Jr were the only drivers (other than Max Verstappen - who chose to stay out) with a second set of softs available, so took the chance to fit them and go to the end.

Renault and Williams had already used theirs up so could not realistically pit without needing another stop.

Jolyon Palmer suggested he could have beaten Wehrlein without the safety car allowing the Manor to close back up to the field, but Palmer also paid a price for not attempting a one-stop strategy in the way Grosjean did, having started on super-softs too.

Grosjean's team-mate Esteban Gutierrez also helped Wehrlein out by choosing not to ditch his second set of super-softs for softs under the safety car and having to pit again later to fit the mandatory compound.

When Jules Bianchi scored Manor's first F1 points in Monaco in 2014, misfortune and crashes for rivals played a major role.

There's no doubt circumstances again helped Manor in Austria - Perez, Massa and Alonso's failures, Nico Hulkenberg's extreme tyre wear, Gutierrez's horrendous start and rivals' strategic errors all contributed.

But a circuit well suited to the car, Wehrlein's individual brilliance on Saturday, and Manor's call on tyre strategy in the race played a big role.