Round 11/24: Review of the Austrian Grand Prix Qualifying

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Max Verstappen blew away the competition with an impressive series of laps throughout the session as he out-qualified Lando Norris by over four-tenths of a second. Oscar Piastri finished P3 but was relegated to P7 as his final effort was deleted promoting George Russell into P3. Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton finished in P4 and P5 while Charles Leclerc went wide in his final run and ended up finishing only P6.

Q1:

Q1 started with the Red Bulls and Verstappen coming out on used softs. Interestingly, both his runs in Q1 were on used softs, but still he was pretty much in the mix. It was the Ferrari of Leclerc that set the pace in the initial runs while Mercedes held back both their drivers. This did pay dividends as Russell went fastest on his first run. After the second runs, it was Sainz who was leading over Piastri and Verstappen while Hamilton found himself in the drop zone in P16. Lance Stroll, Nico Hulkenberg, Logan Sargeant and Zhou Guyanu were the others in the drop zone.

In the final runs, Hamilton went first understandably as he was at the risk of elimination and a clear track provided him with the confidence of finishing well and he made good ground away from elimination. In the end, it was both the Williams and both the Saubers along with Stroll who were eliminated in Q1. Fernando Alonso finished P15 while both the VCARB drivers made it into Q2. It was one of the closest Q1’s in a long time as the first and the last drivers were just separated by 0.8 seconds.

Q2:

Verstappen lit the field once he put on the new soft tyres for Q2. Immediately, he went over a second faster than the quickest driver at that point of time. He even went a tenth quicker than himself with another set of soft tyres at the end of Q2. It was evident that the Red Bull was quicker, possibly due to minor changes in the setup after the sprint race.

After the first runs though, it was the two Hass’s, Pierre Gasly, Yuki Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso who were in the elimination zone. Daniel Ricciardo was the driver in risk and in the final runs Nico Hulkenberg found pace to move into Q3 once again, demoting the Australian driver by 15 thousands of a second. The others though couldn’t find any improvement and bowed out of qualifying. At the top, the gap was nearly half a tenth between Verstappen and his rivals while Perez once again couldn’t replicate the performance of his teammate.

Q3:

Going into Q3, Verstappen set an impressive time of 1:04.4 in his first run while Norris, though quicker in the first sector, was still behind by nearly 4 tenths. Perez was over one second behind his teammate while Leclerc and Piastri finished in P3 and P4 for the initial runs. The Mercedes didn’t have the pace today to compete for pole and on top of that Hamilton managed to hit a hydraulic jack on his way out of the box.

In the second runs, Verstappen went quicker in S1 and S3 but lost a bit of a time in S2. However, in the end he went quicker than his initial lap and that was comfortably enough for pole position. Hulkenberg beat the Alpine of Ocon to finish P9 and the rest of the order was as expected. Piastri lost places due to his lap time being deleted while Leclerc messed up his lap running wide at the closing stages of his lap, possibly damaging the floor.

POS DRIVER CONSTRUCTOR Q1 TIME Q2 TIME Q3 TIME
1 Max Verstappen RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 1:05.336 1:04.469 1:04.314
2 Lando Norris MCLAREN MERCEDES 1:05.450 1:05.103 1:04.718
3 George Russell MERCEDES 1:05.585 1:05.016 1:04.840
4 Carlos Sainz FERRARI 1:05.263 1:05.016 1:04.851
5 Lewis Hamilton MERCEDES 1:05.541 1:05.053 1:04.903
6 Charles Leclerc FERRARI 1:05.509 1:05.104 1:05.044
7 Oscar Piastri MCLAREN MERCEDES 1:05.311 1:05.070 1:05.048
8 Sergio Perez RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 1:05.587 1:05.144 1:05.202
9 Nico Hulkenberg HAAS FERRARI 1:05.596 1:05.262 1:05.385
10 Esteban Ocon ALPINE RENAULT 1:05.574 1:05.274 1:05.883
11 Daniel Ricciardo RB HONDA RBPT 1:05.569 1:05.289
12 Kevin Magnussen HAAS FERRARI 1:05.508 1:05.347
13 Pierre Gasly ALPINE RENAULT 1:05.598 1:05.359
14 Yuki Tsunoda RB HONDA RBPT 1:05.563 1:05.412
15 Fernando Alonso ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 1:05.656 1:05.639
16 Alexander Albon WILLIAMS MERCEDES 1:05.736
17 Lance Stroll ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 1:05.819
18 Valtteri Bottas KICK SAUBER FERRARI 1:05.847
19 Logan Sargeant WILLIAMS MERCEDES 1:05.856
20 Zhou Guanyu KICK SAUBER FERRARI 1:06.061

References

  1. Image Credits: www.motorsport.com
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  3. Timing Sheet Credits: www.formula1.com