The tides turned towards Valtteri Bottas as he beat Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to pole position in qualifying at the Austrian Grand Prix despite taking an excursion into the gravel on his final flyer.
Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen clinched third and will start on mediums compared to the Mercedes pairing, with Lando Norris claiming an impressive fourth for McLaren as Racing Point’s promising pace was only enough to reach as high as sixth while Ferrari endured a disappointing session.
Bottas blitzed the track record with a 1:02.939 on his initial run in the third qualifying stage, with Hamilton unable to outpace his team-mate on his own effort in the final two sectors after losing time.
On their final hot laps, Bottas improved in sector one but then took a trip into gravel upon the exit of turn four – with the Finn later spinning onto the grass as he rejoined the track – while Hamilton was on course to better his time.
The reigning World Champion did lower his benchmark to a 1:02.951 but was not enough to eclipse his team-mate having scored a hat-rick of P1’s in all three practice sessions.
Verstappen was third but will start on the yellow side-walled medium rubber after getting through on the more durable tyre, with Norris jumping to fourth with a sensational lap in his Renault-powered MCL35 racer.
The second Red Bull of Alexander Albon completed the top five ahead of the aforementioned Racing Point RP20 of Perez, who beat Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to sixth.
Leclerc was the lone Ferrari driver in Q3 as team-mate Sebastian Vettel suffered a shock Q2 elimination, but the Monegasque-youngster wound up 0.984 seconds adrift of Bottas’ benchmark pole time.
McLaren’s Carlos Sainz was eighth, ahead of Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo who took ninth and Racing Point’s Lance Stroll rounded out the top ten.
In the second qualifying stage, which Bottas topped slightly quicker than team-mate Hamilton, Ferrari’s Vettel was shockingly knocked out when Albon moved up the time-sheets into P3 after a late improvement.
Vettel was a threat to be eliminated sitting in P10 after the initial Q2 runs, and on his final hot lap, he bounced over the kerbs at turn one and the final corner, sliding his SF1000 racer on both occasions and failing to improve on his time, with team-mate Leclerc just scraping into Q3 in P10 at the end of the second qualifying segment.
The two Scuderia AlphaTauri’s followed with Pierre Gasly in 12th and 13th respectively, while Renault’s Esteban Ocon – who made his first qualifying appearance since the 2018 season-finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, was 14th and Haas F1 Team’s Romain Grosjean 15th.
In the first qualifying stage, which saw Verstappen top the time-sheets while his Red Bull team-mate Albon waited anxiously in anticipation as he took a risk not to have one final run, last-final improvements from the Haas F1 Team pairing cost Williams a Q2 appearance.
Grosjean sneaked through ahead of team-mate Kevin Magnussen, while Williams’ George Russell, who was 15th before the last Q1 flyers, failed to improve on his final hot lap – losing time after a snap of oversteer exiting the right-hand turn four heading downhill – causing the Dane to start 17th.
The Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN duo of Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Raikkonen were 18th and 19th respectively as Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi brought up the rear.
You can see the full Formula 1 Rolex Grosser Preis Von Osterreich (Austrian Grand Prix) 2020 Qualifying Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2020/races/1045/austria/qualifying.html
Earlier in FP3, it was Hamilton who had a clean-sweep of being top of the time-sheets ahead of Mercedes team-mate Bottas, Verstappen completed the top three with Perez fourth and Leclerc rounding out the top five.
You can watch practice three highlights at the following link: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.fp3-highlights-enjoy-the-best-of-the-action-from-austria-as-the-drivers-gear.1JAYnXpTva7rGbv02d9rDq.html
You can catch up on the Formula 1 Rolex Grosser Preis Von Osterreich (Austrian GP) 2020 Free Practice One and Two reports at the following links:
@LewisHamilton leads @MercedesAMGF1 one-two in #AustrianGP FP1. #F1
@LewisHamilton heads @MercedesAMG 1-2 in #AustrianGP FP2. #F1 #F1IsBack
Read this weekend’s race preview here.