Valtteri Bottas surprised his teammate Lewis Lewis Hamilton by claiming 12th pole position of his Formula 1 career on a day when Ferrari’s worst fears came home.
Bottas finished just 0.012 seconds behind Hamilton in qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix, setting a lap record at the Red Bull Ring en route with a time of one minute 02.939s. It is his third pole in four years at the site.
The duo was half a second free from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, although the Dutchman will start with the medium tire, he was the only driver to reach Q3 on that compound, thus offering a different strategic variable than those in front of him. . he.
In what was F1’s first qualifying session in 217 days since the last day of November in Abu Dhabi last year, it turned out to be a welcome and exciting session, despite the lack of fans in the Red Bull Ring stands. as part of F1’s return to action. .
After finishing fastest in all three practice sessions, Hamilton had to settle for only the third fastest in Q1, almost two-tenths of a second less than Verstappen, with Bottas separating the duo that many consider will be the main protagonists of the title.
In Q2, Hamilton moved up one spot, but it was Bottas in front by eight hundredths of a second, and it was the Finn who beat the six-time F1 champion in the final 10-minute session.
Bottas had to rely on his first run to solve the problem, as he left the track and got into the gravel for his second, with Hamilton behind the improvement, but not enough to claim first place on the grid.
Behind Verstappen, McLaren’s Lando Norris produced a dazzling performance to claim the fourth, pushing Red Bull’s Alex Albon to fifth.
Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez will line up sixth, followed by Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari, Carlos Sainz’s second McLaren, Lance Stroll in his Racing Point, with Daniel Ricciardo in tenth place for Renault.
For the Scuderia, with no improvements to the car, having chosen to take a different development path after a poor form of pre-season testing, Sebastian Vettel couldn’t even get out of Q2.
At the start of his last season with Ferrari, the four-time champion will start an unfortunate eleventh, with the German outscored by teammate Leclerc by 0.165s.
Vettel’s company in row six is Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri, followed by his teammate at Daniil Kvyat, with Esteban Ocon ranking a disappointing 14th on his Renault debut, and Romain Grosjean 15th for Haas.
In his F1 debut, Nicolas Latifi will start from the back of the grid for Williams, but in an encouraging sign for the team, he did not block the tenth and last row.
Teammate George Russell lost a place in Q2 by just seven hundredths of a second and will start 17th, with the Alfa Romeo duo Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Raikkonen sandwiched Williams’ pair, with the last half-second up in a distant Latifi .
Kevin Magnussen led the Q1 departments in his Haas at 16th, and just three thousandths of a second ahead of Russell, a year after one of the team’s best qualifying performances when the Danish started fifth last season.
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