Verstappen cruises to pole at Red Bull Ring; Norris once again closest pursuer in P2, Russell surges to P3 after Piastri track limits violation
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continued his dominance at the team’s eponymous Red Bull Ring, where the flying Dutchman has won four of the last six races here in the mountains of Spielberg. Verstappen fended off the best efforts of McLaren’s Lando Norris to secure pole for Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix not long after a rather procedural romp to victory in the 23-lap Saturday Sprint race earlier in the day. Verstappen kept his mojo working in qualifying en route to yet another pole position, his eighth out of eleven rounds in 2024. It was also Verstappen’s fifth consecutive pole here at the short and speedy little Red Bull Ring and the triple World Champion’s 40th of his brilliant career. With his current run of otherworldly form, you can expect him to at least double that number by the time the Dutch master is through.
Norris was once again Verstappen’s main challenger and, while he couldn’t match Max’s one lap pace and ended up some 0.4-seconds adrift in P2 on the grid, the team and their young English star can take some hope from the fact that Norris seems to fly even faster in race trim. His teammate Oscar Piastri was also looking very quick but had his final lap in Q3 deleted for track limits violations, relegating the speedy Aussie to a P7 start come Sunday. That error benefitted Mercedes’ George Russell, whose time was both legal and good enough for P3 on the second row. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz will line up across from Russell in P4, with the second Merc of Lewis Hamilton once again struggling a bit more than his teammate and only able to muster a time good enough for P5. With the second Prancing Horse of Charles Leclerc botching his final try and staying P6, it could make for a very spicy start with the mixed Mercedes-Ferrari second and third rows at the start of tomorrow’s race.
Rounding out the top ten qualifiers, Sergio Perez was once again far off his teammates supreme pace and scuffled to an utterly mediocre P8 time, while Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg certainly over performed his car in P9 and Esteban Ocon showed good consistency in his improved Alpine to grab a respectable P10 place for tomorrow’s starting grid.
Top 10 qualifiers for the Austrian GP:
| POS | DRIVER | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:05.336 | 1:04.469 | 1:04.314 | |
| 2 | 1:05.450 | 1:05.103 | 1:04.718 | |
| 3 | 1:05.585 | 1:05.016 | 1:04.840 | |
| 4 | 1:05.263 | 1:05.016 | 1:04.851 | |
| 5 | 1:05.541 | 1:05.053 | 1:04.903 | |
| 6 | 1:05.509 | 1:05.104 | 1:05.044 | |
| 7 | 1:05.311 | 1:05.070 | 1:05.048 | |
| 8 | 1:05.587 | 1:05.144 | 1:05.202 | |
| 9 | 1:05.596 | 1:05.262 | 1:05.385 | |
| 10 | 1:05.574 | 1:05.274 | 1:05.883 |
Complete qualifying results available via Fromula1.com.
Sunday’s race airs live on ESPN beginning at 9 am Eastern here in the States. Have Norris and Russell got anything for Verstappen at Red Bull’s home circuit or will they just be battling each other, Hamilton and the two Ferraris for second place? Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!