It's Back-To-Back Poles For Verstappen #StyrianGP
Red Bull RingMax delivered Red Bull Racing’s first pole position at its home track with a stunning qualifying display in Austria.
At the scene of the very first Red Bull Honda victory, Max was the only driver to get under the 1m04s mark as he secured the 83rd pole position for Honda engines in Formula 1.
Following the data anomaly spotted yesterday on Pierre’s PU, we fitted a new MGU-K ahead of final practice in what was a penalty-free change as it is the third of these components he has used, and from then on it was an extremely competitive day for both Red Bull and Scuderia AlphaTauri.
All four cars advanced smoothly through Q1, with Max setting the pace and Yuki enjoying a strong start to the session with the fourth quickest time. Sergio was fifth ahead of Pierre in eighth, with the Frenchman progressing without alarm despite seeing an earlier lap time deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 10.
Q2 was a tense session with the field really closely matched on such a short lap in terms of time and the drivers produced excellent laps to ensure they all reached Q3. Sergio was quickest on this occasion, with Pierre and Yuki both joining him in qualifying on the soft tyre, while Max went through on the mediums and will start on that compound on Sunday.
The final part of qualifying saw Max deliver two blistering laps, with his first a 1:03.841 that proved unbeatable, and his second just 0.1s slower and a time that still would have been good enough for pole.
Sergio had a solid run and was just over 0.3s off his team-mate in fifth place, but will start from fourth due to a grid penalty for Valtteri Bottas. Pierre was less than 0.05s behind Sergio but remains sixth on the grid as Bottas will start in fifth, while Yuki provisionally lines up eighth but must await the outcome of an investigation into whether he held up Bottas early in Q3.
*Yuki received a three-place grid penalty and will start the race from 11th.
An excellent performance from both our teams to get all four drivers into the top eight and another brilliant lap from Max to take his third pole of the season, his second in a row. While the rest of the field was very close, Max managed to pull out a gap of two tenth over second place, which is quite considerable on this short track. Checo qualified fifth and will start from fourth on the Soft tyre, having set his Q2 time on that compound and his race pace and good tyre management means we expect him to move up the order. Pierre did well considering he could not take part in FP2 yesterday and Yuki has had a very clean weekend so far with no mistakes to get to Q3 for the second time in his career. In fact all our drivers showed encouraging long-run pace in free practice, so we have to aim for a very good result tomorrow at Red Bull’s home track.
It is of course a great result to take the Team’s first pole position at our home track and I feel very good about that. We made a big step forward in qualifying this year and although the car has been competitive and pretty easy to set-up all weekend we still made some good changes for qualifying. From my side, the first lap in Q3 felt pretty good. Around here you don’t have many corners but it is actually quite hard to nail the lap because of the braking up to Turn 3 and 4 where it is easy to lose a tenth if you make a tiny mistake. When I started driving in F1 this was always one of the tracks that I felt good at and as there aren’t many corners the driver can make a big difference, which I like. Some tracks are pretty straight forward on how you take corners but here there are a few options for that which makes it more enjoyable. I expect it will be super tight again tomorrow. We know Mercedes have a strong race car and they are pretty good on the tyres so it will be very close, which I think is also good for the fans and the way everyone likes it.
I’m a bit disappointed with qualifying today, especially Q1, as I think it really compromised our session. We had to use a second set of tyres for the second run in Q1 as I wasn’t totally happy with the balance on the first run. Then for my first lap in Q3 I was on used tyres and it was looking pretty good but when we went on to the new tyre it was a very complicated lap and I did not improve as much as I hoped. We just have to analyse what happened there on the first run and go from there, especially as the margins are extremely tight here and the midfield are also right up there. We still have a very good strategy in place for tomorrow, starting on the softs, and there’s a long race ahead and still plenty to play for so I’m looking forward to it. I believe we can have a good solid race. Well done to Max today too, he’s done a great job.
I’m really pleased with today. We knew it wouldn’t be an easy day, after losing FP2 yesterday, but the car has been amazing all weekend and I was confident going into Qualifying. I think we have showed that this afternoon, we managed to get through Q2 with just one set of tyres which is really good for us, and we’re just a few tenths off the front row. I’m really happy with all the work the team have been doing and the improvements we’re continuing to make each weekend. It’s exciting times for us and shows we just need to keep pushing, everything is possible and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
I think the car has been good this weekend and I’ve made a strong step up. I started Qualifying with an easier approach and then developed my lap as I went through each session. My final push wasn’t perfect but I’m happy to make it through to Q3 and it’s a positive move in the right direction for me. Unfortunately, I am now starting tomorrow from P11, but dry weather isn’t guaranteed for the race, so we’ll plan for a variety of situations tonight and see what happens.
