Red Bull driver Max Verstappen will start Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix from pole position after dominating on Saturday, ahead of and .
The first qualifying stint saw Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz lead the field. The Spanish driver, with a time of 1:05.263, came ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who had had an amazing performance in the Sprint race earlier, and finished just 0.048s short of the number 55.
Reigning Champion Max Verstappen was 0.073s slower than Sainz, finishing Q1 in P3. Although, being the first of three parts of qualifying, the results at the top don’t mean much.
What matters instead is those at the back, and once again we’ve seen the usual: Williams and Sauber, both teams completely knocked out in Q1, with Guanyu Zhou being the slowest of them all, almost half a second behind Sainz. His teammate, Bottas, placed P18 ahead of Logan Sargeant and behind of Lance Stroll.
Alexander Albon completed the elimination table in P16, just behind Fernando Alonso who barely made it to Q2.
Someone who also seemed to struggle through the session was Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez, as he placed the 14th fastest time in Q1. The Mexican driver had also suffered during the Sprint race.
The second part of qualifying started to look more like the usual, with Verstappen topping the charts ahead of Sainz (+0.547s) and George Russell (+0.547s).
The duo of McLaren dropped further back in P5 and P6, with Piastri ahead of teammate Lando Norris.
Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was behind in P7 (+0.635s) and ahead of Pérez (+0.675s).
Those knocked out in Q2 were RB’s Daniel Ricciardo (0.820s) and his teammate Yuki Tsunoda (+0.943s), Kevin Magnussen (+0.878s), Fernando Alonso (+1.170s) and Pierre Gasly, whose last laptime was deleted for infringing track limits.
The final 10 minutes of qualifying saw Verstappen clinch pole once again by almost half a second to second-placed Lando Norris (+0.404s) and Oscar Piastri (+0.472s), who couldn’t make it ahead of his teammate unlike in the Sprint.
Carlos Sainz divided the Mercedes duo after finishing in P5 (+0.537S) ahead of Lewis Hamilton (+0.589) and behind George Russell (+0.526s).
Leclerc placed the 7th fastest time again (+0.730s) ahead of Mexican Pérez (+0.888s). The top 10 was completed by, surprisingly, Nico Hulkenberg (+1.071s) and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon (+1.569).