Verstappen tops Austria sprint qualifying as rivals falter

Max Verstappen lead a Red Bull front-row lockout ahead of Sergio Perez in qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix sprint after the team’s chief rivals fumbled their way through the damp session.

Verstappen was in commanding form on the still-drying track following morning rain to beat Perez by 0.493s despite a wobble through Turn 3 that the team guessed cost him as much as 0.15s.

“The car was in a good window, good balance,” he said. “Very happy of course to be first.”

Perez put in a much-improved performance to back up the title leader on the front row, albeit almost half a second adrift.

He was aided by the absence of Ferrari and Mercedes in the fight for pole, however.

Ferrari mystifyingly lacked the pole-challenging pace it enjoyed in warmer conditions on Friday. Both drivers flirted with the knockout zone in both qualifying segments, with Sainz almost eliminated from SQ1 due to a brake-by-wire system failure that required rapid repairs.

The Spaniard ended up fifth on the grid but almost 0.7s off the pace, while teammate Charles Leclerc wallowed to sixth and 0.8s adrift.

But Mercedes fared even worse, losing Lewis Hamilton in 18th and George Russell to 15th.

Hamilton was a victim of track limits in a frenetic SQ1 segment on a drying circuit. The Briton had set a time that would’ve comfortably seen him through to SQ2 but was judged to have overrun the track boundary at Turn 9.

He had time to go again, but he was poorly placed on the circuit and caught traffic as the clock counted down. Unable to improve, he returned to pit lane to accept 18th on the sprint grid.

Russell compounded matters by radioing that he had suffered a hydraulic failure on his way back to the pits. The team worked frantically to repair the car, but hope was abandoned when it became clear a steering rack change would be required, leaving him without a time in SQ2 and eliminated in 15th.

With those big hitters out of the way, Lando Norris could improve on his fourth on the grand prix grid to put himself third for the sprint, 0.57s off the pace. He pipped a sensational Nico Hulkenberg, who put his Haas fourth.

Sainz and Leclerc followed ahead of the similarly wayward Aston Martin duo of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll in seventh and eighth, while Esteban Ocon and Kevin Magnussen completed the top 10.

Alex Albon will start the sprint 11th ahead of Pierre Gasly and AlphaTauri teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries and the stricken Russell, who didn’t set a time due to his hydraulic issues.

Zhou Guanyu missed out on SQ2 by just 0.001s, that tiny fraction allowing Leclerc to progress through to the top 10.

Oscar Piastri will start the sprint ahead of the knocked-out Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Logan Sargeant.