Red Bull had plans to run this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix on a reverse layout before being dropped, Helmut Marko claims.

The Spielberg circuit is hosting two races for the second straight year in 2021, and after the Styrian GP took place on the standard Red Bull Ring track, the organisers were considering ways to spice up the second weekend.

One idea was to trial the new Sprint Qualifying format, but that was quickly ruled out with Silverstone understood to have paid a premium fee to be the first race to use it.

Therefore: “Together with the FIA, we drew up a plan to drive in the opposite direction for the race,” Marko explained to Germany's Auto Motor und Sport.

“There were two tricky spots. In Turn 3, you would brake over a crest into nothing [but the barrier] and in Turn 1, a car could have flown into the spectators without special protection because the cars would have been there going downhill at high speed towards the corner.”

Other hurdles included a reported cost of 5-8m Euros to make the Red Bull Ring safe for a reverse layout race, while there were also concerns that the four days between the two races wouldn't be enough to move barriers and other circuit furniture.

Instead, the only change for this weekend will be the tyre compounds with Pirelli bringing the C5 as the new soft to replace the C2 hard tyre from last weekend.

"It's going to be interesting to see how the teams get to grips with the C5 tyres for the second race weekend – and how the new selection influences strategy in order to create different opportunities compared to the preceding Styrian Grand Prix," Pirelli's head of motorsport Mario Isola said.