Styrian Grand Prix – Qualifying – Verstappen, like a champion!

Superb qualification dominated by Verstappen who takes pole position with a lap in 1:03.841 ahead of Bottas and Hamilton. The Finnish driver is penalized by 3 places, so it will be Norris who takes 3rd place.

Q3: Verstappen in charge

Alone on track, Hamilton set the fastest time of this final qualifying session in 1:04.205. Verstappen is impressive on a circuit as short as the Red Bull Ring. The Dutch driver took the lead with a lap in 1:03.841, the first driver to go below the 1:04 mark. Norris follows this leading duo ahead of Bottas, Perez, Gasly, and Leclerc. Stroll on a different strategy took 8th place ahead of Tsunoda and Alonso.

Hamilton missed on his last attempt while the other drivers did not improve. The ranking remained unchanged from their first Q3 laps.

Q2: Norris in great shape

Bottas, penalized by 3 places for the race, is the first to take the track by starting on medium tires, but the Finnish driver missed his first attempt. Verstappen and Hamilton took the gamble of medium tires while Perez is on soft tires. At the limit, Verstappen clocked a 1:04.540 ahead of his teammate. Hamilton had a bad lap and is 5th behind Russell.

It wasn’t until mid-session that the entire field entered the track. Gasly took the lead with a superb lap in 1:04:429 on soft tires.

The gap between Norris and Ricciardo is impressive. The Englishman in 1:04.053 is over a second ahead of the Australian.

Qualifying session full of suspense with the top 4 cars separated by only 0.024s!

On his last attempt, Hamilton climbed up to 5th place, +0.083s behind Gasly. Few drivers improved their lap times. Leclerc escaped elimination by less than 3 hundredths. Sainz failed to improve his time and will start 12th behind Russell, who missed out on Q3 by 0.008s… Ricciardo is really struggling and will start 13th ahead of Vettel and Giovinazzi, while Norris finished 2nd in Q2.

Eliminated from Q2:

– Russell

– Sainz

– Ricciardo

– Vettel

– Giovinazzi

Q1: Räikkönen trapped in traffic

No rush at the opening of the first qualifying session. Latifi, first on track, set an initial time of 1:05.963. Several laps canceled, especially for Mazepin, while Norris in a strong attack manages to keep his car within the track limits and sets a lap time of 1:04.894. At the halfway point, Verstappen took the lead in 1:04.489, only 48 milliseconds ahead of Bottas. Hamilton is 4th ahead of Gasly, Leclerc, and Tsunoda.

The track is evolving significantly and all the drivers had to put on a new set of tires. Räikkönen went off at turn 4 without incident but brought gravel back onto the track. Many improvements but the trap of traffic cost Räikkönen and Ocon dearly as they did not make it through the first part of qualifying. Ricciardo narrowly escaped with a 15th place while Russell made it to Q2 with a 12th place.

Eliminated in Q1:

– Latifi

– Räikkönen

– Ocon

– Schumacher

– Mazepin

Complete table: