Max Verstappen takes pole position for the third weekend in a row as he looks to complete a clean sweep of Grand Prix’s in Austria! An ecstatic Lando Norris qualified second at the track where he scored his inaugural podium last year. He missed out his first-ever pole position by half a tenth of a second. Sergio Perez rounds out the top 3. It’s clear now that when Lando Norris told journalists that he could give Verstappen a run for his money – he was certainly not playing around!
Written by Aiden Hover, Edited by Tanishka Vashee
A disappointed Sir Lewis Hamilton will start 4th as both he and his 5th place Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas struggled to match the pace of the RedBulls ahead. On the other hand, the Alpha Tauri team will be delighted with their drivers today as Pierre Gasly qualifies 6th once again whilst Yuki Tsunoda broke his qualifying rut to achieve 7th today. Birthday boy Sebastian Vettel drove well to achieve 8th on the grid for tomorrow with his teammate starting 10th. The main story, however, is Mr Qualifying himself George Russell, who drove the heart out of his Williams to not only achieve his first Q3 appearance as a Williams driver but to do so with a 9th place finish!
Following a dramatic Qualifying Two, Sebastian Vettel will be investigated after the session for severely impeding Fernando Alonso who had his final flying lap ruined and so qualified only 14th. Vettel will almost certainly receive a penalty for this mistake [not the birthday present that he would have wanted]. This does mean that we could see George Russell start 8th, to the delight of many fans. It was also a poor showing for both Ferrari drivers today as they only managed 11th and 12th, Carlos Sainz ahead of Charles Leclerc, however, both beat the struggling McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo. Antonio Giovinazzi set a time good enough to beat out the Alpine of Alonso but had his time deleted due to track limits which saw him last of the Q2 eliminations.
Qualifying One saw the elimination of Kimi Raikkonen who once again was comfortably beaten by his teammate – though the true loser of Qualifying One was Esteban Ocon who, for the second week in a row, lacked confidence throughout his lap and will begin tomorrow’s race in 17th. Nicholas Latifi rounds out the grid in 18th just ahead of the two Haas cars – Mick Schumacher ahead of Nikita Mazepin.
Be sure not to miss tomorrow’s race as it looks set to be a thriller with multiple teams looking good enough to challenge for the win!