SPIELBERG, Austria – Max Verstappen claimed his third-straight Formula 1 pole Saturday, edging McLaren’s Lando Norris for the Austrian Grand Prix pole at the Red Bull Ring.
Verstappen topped the charts with a 1:04.591 lap, which was barely fast enough to best Norris by .048 seconds for the top starting position in Sunday’s race. It is Norris’ first front row qualifying effort. Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez, qualified third.
“Q1 and Q2 were very good and comfortable but I was not entirely happy in Q3 as my laps weren’t amazing,” Verstappen admitted. “I’m of course happy to be on pole, especially at the Red Bull Ring again, and having three poles in a row is great for the team. But I cannot be entirely happy as I always want to be perfect and I always want to analyse what went well and what went wrong. Maybe that is how I grew up but I also believe that is how you keep improving.
“Now I’m just looking forward to tomorrow as we have a good race car and of course with Checo being third as well it is great for the Team and hopefully we can push together and score a lot of points. It was also an amazing lap by Lando and they have been quite close this weekend but I don’t expect them to be our main rivals in the race tomorrow. I’m very pleased with the whole package, the car and engine together have been working so well over the last few races, so we have good confidence for tomorrow but for sure it’s never easy and it’s softer compounds compared to last week so it will be tough to manage those in the race and we still have strong competition. It was also amazing to see the orange army back in the grandstands. It has been a long time and they are so happy to be here cheering us on which I love to see.”
The Mecedes teammates continue to chase the Red Bull squad, with Lewis Hamilton qualifying a frustrating fourth. Valtteri Bottas was next, qualifying fifth.
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly will start sixth, followed by Yuki Tsunoda and Sebastian Vettel. George Russell put Williams in Q3 for the first time this season and secured the ninth starting position. Lance Stroll qualified 10th.