Max Verstappen took pole position, with a blistering laptime almost 2 tenths ahead of Valtteri Bottas’s Mercedes. However the latter has a 3 place grid penalty that will drop him to fifth. This promotes Lewis Hamilton to second, despite squandering his final qualifying lap. Lando Norris set an incredible laptime to qualify in third ahead of Sergio Perez in fourth, whilst Bottas will start fifth.
Pierre Gasly set the sixth fastest time in the AlphaTauri ahead of Charles Leclerc in seventh and Yuki Tsunoda, who is under investigation for impeding Valtteri Bottas in eighth. Fernando Alonso was happy with ninth with Lance Stroll rounding out the top 10.
George Russell came agonisingly close to making it into Q3 for the first time, missing out by only 8 thousandths of a second, qualifying in eleventh. It was a gutting session for Carlos Sainz who qualified down in twelfth ahead of another disappointment for Daniel Ricciardo. Sebastian Vettel had a laptime deleted putting him down in fourteenth with Antonio Giovinazzi qualifying in fifteenth.
The biggest shock of Q1 was Esteban Ocon qualifying down in seventeenth place. Nicholas Latifi showed promise earlier in the session but qualified in sixteenth. Kimi Raikkonen starts in eighteenth ahead of the two Haas cars of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin.
Here is the provisional starting grid for tomorrow’s Styrian GP.
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