Bottas (C) on pole, Hamilton (L) 2nd and Vettel (R) third on the grid for the Austrian GP
Valtteri Bottas has taken pole position for the 2018 Austrian Grand Prix, narrowly beating Lewis Hamilton in to second and delivering a Mercedes front row.
For now, the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel sits on third place for tomorrow’s race, but he he is under a bit of a cloud with a Stewards on his blocking of Carlo Sainz (Update: Vettel is demoted three places), and team mate Kimi Raikkonen took fourth place for a Ferrari second row.
But there’s did seem to be something between the Red Bulls, with Ricciardo seemingly upset with Verstappen sitting in his slipstream to gain an advantage, and he was probably right as Verstappen starts fifth and Ricciardo seventh.
Splitting the Red Bulls is Haas driver Romain Grosjean, with Magnussen in eighth, Sainz in ninth and Hulkenberg in 10th.
It was another miserable qualifying for the British pair of McLaren and Williams, with Alonso only managing to qualify in 14th after damaging his front wing in Q2, and Vandoorne not making it past Q1 and starting in 16th, although both will start a place higher after Leclerc got a five place penalty for a gearbox change.
Williams actually made it out of Q1, with Lance Stroll starting 15 (14 after Leclerc’s penalty), although Sirotkin didn’t and will start in 17th.
Mercedes Toto Wolff said:
It’s a fantastic result to take the front row here in Spielberg with Valtteri just a few hundredths ahead of Lewis. We have been pushing hard in recent weeks to add performance to the car and, after the upgraded engine last week, it was really impressive to see the size of the aero upgrade here at the second race of the triple header. The hard work has paid off so far, with the car performing well and handling nicely around this circuit.
On paper, Austria shouldn’t favour either Ferrari or Mercedes, so the race tomorrow could be an interesting one.
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