Penalties for Bottas, Ferrari’s woes, great Norris or How did qualifying go?

Qualifying for Sunday’s Styrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Austria is now behind us. And it showed a lot – an outstanding performance by Lando Norris or the travails of Ferrari or Daniel Ricciardo.

The first part of qualifying for Sunday’s Styrian Grand Prix didn’t produce any particularly surprising results. At the tail end of the grid, we again find both Haas monoposts.

Twentieth-placed Nikita Mazepin and nineteenth-placed Mick Schumacher lost six tenths of a second to eighteenth-placed Kimi Räikkönen, which is simply too much in the world of Formula One. Unfortunately, both drivers can’t expect any improvement in the future of the world championship either.

Even before the season, Gene Haas, the team owner, decided to stop investing in any further technical development of the monopost and unfortunately it looks like this is the case.

Ahead of Räikkönen in seventeenth place is Esteban Ocon, who is another driver who failed to progress to the next part of qualifying. However, this position must be a big disappointment for Ocon. In the first and second practice sessions in particular, he and his Alpino placed very highly (seventh and third respectively).

Canadian Nicholas Latifi in the Williams monopost also failed to qualify for the second segment of Sunday’s qualifying. He lost thirty thousandths of a second to advance to Q2.

The second part of the qualifying session was merciless, especially to the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo, who races in the orange McLaren colours. The Red Bull Ring, in short, is a circuit where Ferrari has struggled and will continue to struggle in the race.

Spaniard Sainz will start Sunday’s race from 12th position. Powerlessness and unhappy performances continue to haunt Australian Ricciardo, who still hasn’t been able to get to grips with his car properly. His teammate Lando Norris will start from position number 13.

Fourteenth on the grid will see Sebastian Vettel, who has been putting in solid performances in his Aston Martin in recent races. Fifteenth on the results list is Antonio Giovinazzi.

A mere eight thousandths of a second then deprived George Russell in the Williams monopost of eleventh place in the final part of qualifying.

The final part of Saturday’s action produced some interesting results. It was Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll who advanced to Q3 at Russell’s expense. Stroll will take tenth position on the grid.

Ninth place at the start belongs to Fernando Alonso, while finally a solid performance in qualifying was delivered by Yuki Tsunoda in the Alpha Tauri. In fact, the young Japanese and Formula 1 rookie had crashed in half of the qualifying sessions he had driven so far and needed a good result like salt.

The seventh fastest time in qualifying was set by Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari. However, the Italian Maranello stable is not doing well at all in terms of race pace on open tracks and Leclerc’s fight for podium positions is not to be expected.

Tsunoda’s teammate Pierre Gasly will start Sunday’s Styrian Grand Prix as sixth in the standings. Sergio Pérez set the fifth fastest time, with a fantastic speed and qualifying performance from Norris in his McLaren.

Max Verstappen took pole position in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring. It is Red Bull that will run its home race here, with the Dutch driver beating second-placed Valtteri Bottas by almost two tenths of a second.

Bottas, in any case, managed to beat his teammate Lewis Hamilton in qualifying, pushing him back to an imaginary third place at the start with a time of 1:04.035. Why imaginary?

Because the Finnish driver spun in the pits immediately after leaving his mechanics in the second practice session on Friday, whereupon he received a penalty from the sports commissioners in the form of a loss of three places on the grid. So what does the top ten for Sunday’s start look like?

1. Verstappen, 2. Hamilton, 3. Norris, 4. Pérez, 5. Bottas, 6. Gasly, 7. Leclerc, 8. Tsunoda, 9. Alonso and 10. Stroll.

Source