Verstappen wins the Austrian GP Sprint

It was a good day today. I am extremely happy that we got P1 in the Sprint and put it on pole in Qualifying and am really proud of the Team that we were able to be so competitive. We definitely saw some good improvements after the Sprint race, it all connected and the balance of the car felt a lot better, so hopefully we can keep that going. I could really push to the limit and it felt great to be that competitive in qualifying. The whole session went really well and the car was in a better window; I could push harder, the car was sticking and I am actually quite surprised by the gap! It shows that small changes that you make to the car can really make a difference. I am looking forward to tomorrow. We have had a really good weekend so far but the most important part has to happen tomorrow, so let’s see what the race brings. 

It’s been a tricky weekend, and we have to just keep chipping away. We didn’t have the margins early on in Q1 and Q2, and we ended up using more new sets of tyres than we wanted and went into Q3 with only scrubbed sets left. We had much better pace than we were able to show today but unfortunately we weren’t safe enough throughout the sessions to save a new set for Q3. We’ve done the right changes going forward, and learnt quite a bit from today’s Sprint race which is positive. I think it is going to be really close on track tomorrow and should be an interesting battle where anything can happen. 

We knew that it would have been hard to get into the points in the Sprint, but it was important to race and learn for tomorrow. There are some positives from the battles we had this morning and the way the car responded was not too bad. Of course, it’s frustrating to miss out on Q3 by just a few milliseconds this afternoon, but at the same time, it’s a more positive one as I think we made some progress since yesterday and it’s something we have to be proud of. I think we still need to find something a little bit extra for tomorrow but today’s qualifying put us in a much better position for the race. It’s going to be a longer one with pit stops and tyre differences, so there’s no reason to believe we can’t be a top ten car tomorrow. 

After the Sprint this morning, we still needed to find more performance, but at the same time, we weren’t in a bad position. I think there was the pace to make it to Q3 this afternoon, but I wasn’t able to put it all together, so it’s my bad. The team pushed hard and did a good job because we used all the data we gathered to make the best car out of all the previous sessions. The setup was good, so it’s my fault and a big shame. We’ll push tomorrow and hopefully finish in the top ten.