Max Verstappen secured pole position for Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix after earning the win in the Sprint race at Red Bull Ring.
The Ferrari teammates of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz followed Verstappen, after a hard fought battle earlier in the event.
“It feels good to bring home the Sprint win at here at The Red Bull Ring,” Verstappen said. “The first two laps were important for me to pull a gap, from there it was all about maintaining the pace. The Sprint race of course does not give you the full picture heading into the race tomorrow, but pace wise, it’s close between us and Ferrari. I still expect it to be a tough battle tomorrow, we’ll also have the hard tyres so it will be interesting to see how they perform during the race. It’s going to be very important to make good strategy calls during the race as you never know what can happen, it’s not going to be straightforward but I’m looking forward to it.”
Verstappen would lead Leclerc to the line by 1.6 seconds.
During the formation lap, Alpine’s Fernando Alonso couldn’t get off the grid, forcing him to retire from the event.
A second formation lap was needed after Zhou Guanyu was briefly stopped in the final corner. The Alfa Romeo driver would head to the pits.
After both Mercedes drivers crashed out of qualifying, Lewis Hamilton would finish 8th, with teammate George Russell one position off the podium in fourth.
“I’m grateful I managed to survive out there today,” Hamilton said. “The team did such a great job to get the car back together last night and this morning. A big thank you to them and I’m glad I brought it back mostly in one piece. I didn’t have a good start, then Pierre (Gasly) moved across on me at turn one. I don’t understand why drivers do that when there’s so much space to the right, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Then the same happened in Turn Three with a Williams and Red Bull. I got some sort of damage, but at least could continue. After that, I was just trying to catch up. We are slower on the straights, so I had to wait until I was out of the DRS train to overtake the cars in front. That’s why it took a few laps to get ahead of Mick. Hopefully we can race stronger tomorrow – fingers crossed!”
The Haas F1 Team had a stellar race, with Kevin Magnussen earning two points with a seventh place result, and Mick Schumacher solidly in the top-ten in 9th.