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SPIELBERG, Austria — An ominous (and metaphorical) cloud hangs over the Formula One paddock after Saturday’s qualifying session, where Max Verstappen secured pole position for the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix.
It marked the Dutchman’s eighth pole position in 11 grand prix weekends this year (excluding sprint races), and his fastest Q3 lap was nearly half a second ahead of the one set by Lando Norris, who will line up beside Verstappen once again on the front row. It contrasts the recent weekends with tighter margins as McLaren closes in on Red Bull. “It’s been a while that I felt like this in the car,” Verstappen said.
It comes on a weekend when Red Bull is on its home turf at the Red Bull Ring and looking to extend its lead in the constructor and driver championships. However, tensions are brewing in the camp between Jos Verstappen and team principal Christian Horner after recent comments from the older Verstappen over a ‘Legends Parade’ plan change.
Meanwhile, Norris will look to bounce back from his sprint race mistake on Saturday – but can he take the fight to Max Verstappen? Ferrari and Mercedes are set to battle each other with P3-P6 alternating between a Silver Arrows driver and a Prancing Horse. And while the top teams typically dominate the top 10 on any given race weekend, a few teams lower down the standings have snuck into the mix.
It has already been a hectic weekend at Red Bull Ring thanks to it being a sprint race weekend, but here are the storylines we’re keeping an eye on heading into the Austrian GP.
Verstappen and Norris share the front row again ⚔️
We’re all set for a sizzling Sunday in Spielberg 🔥#F1 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/Ps9JNmCHYx
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 29, 2024
As tension stirs, Verstappen aims for dominance
Verstappen has been doing his part to please the tens of thousands of Dutch fans who made the trip to Austria for this weekend’s race at Red Bull’s home track. He was brave in the battle against Norris that ultimately won him the sprint, and then took a big step come qualifying to take the pole by four-tenths of a second — a considerable margin at such a short track.
Verstappen hailed the improvements made by Red Bull between the sprint and qualifying, calling the car “fire.” He was out of reach today, restoring the kind of domination that has been missing lately. “This is a great statement, and hopefully, we can also show that tomorrow in the race,” Verstappen said.
A big statement to make on a weekend where so much of the narrative surrounding Red Bull has related to the off-track tension linked to Verstappen’s father, Jos, and his comments about team principal Horner.
It stemmed from Jos Verstappen claiming that Horner had tried to block his appearance in the ‘Legends Parade’ arranged by Red Bull at the track on Sunday, where he was due to drive a 2012 Red Bull F1 car. The older Verstappen took shots at Horner in the Dutch media, fanning the flames that sparked back in Bahrain when Jos claimed the team would be “torn apart” if Horner remained in charge after the early-season turbulence.
Horner denied on Friday that he had vetoed Verstappen’s appearance and reiterated that his focus was on the relationship with his driver, not his driver’s father. But the topic has shown little sign of fading away. Jos Verstappen continued to talk about it on Saturday, reportedly saying in a Dutch TV interview that there had been an allusion to a possible issue with the brakes on the car had he taken part.
After his sprint victory, Max Verstappen was asked about the matter and conceded it was “not nice” for anyone involved. He said he understood his father’s view but wanted to focus on his weekend performance. “I want a good relationship with everyone,” Max said. “But of course, this scenario could have been avoided, yes.”
So long as the tension lingers at Red Bull, it only adds a subtext to what should have been a weekend celebrating the team’s two-decade F1 history and on-track success on home soil.
Norris gave Verstappen a good fight in the sprint. But how about the grand prix? (JURE MAKOVEC/AFP via Getty Images)
Can Norris take the fight after his sprint race mistake?
Norris is typically one of the first to admit if he made a mistake, the most recent being during Saturday’s sprint race. On Lap 3, the McLaren driver executed a strong divebomb at Turn 3 to steal the lead from Verstappen but lost it moments later at Turn 4. Norris said, “I messed it up and left the door open like an amateur.”
“It was two corners we battled, and that was it. And then Oscar (Piastri) managed to come past,” he later said. “I tried. Obviously, it didn’t go to plan, but the pace in the car was pretty good, and I think we gave it a good shot, but it wasn’t quite enough today. It’s nice to have two cars up there, nice to have two cars trying to fight against Max, and that’s what we need on Sunday.”
Qualifying took place just a few hours later, and the conditions changed from Friday’s session – Norris mentioned the wind and such making it “trickier.” Though he’ll line up on the front row Sunday, he feels he left some pace on the table (“at least one or two tenths in just doing a very good lap from my side”), though not enough to challenge Verstappen.
“I know what I did wrong, it was obviously very clear. But from the pace advantage Max had today, that’s probably going to carry into something tomorrow as well,” Norris said. “So I’m not sure even today if I had a perfect run of things, and if it was just between Max and myself, I’m not sure I probably would have had the pace to quite keep up with what Max was able to do. Then, into quali today, it showed that they were just a pretty good step ahead of us. So we’ll see.”
McLaren’s form continues to improve, but Verstappen seems out of reach. “If he doesn’t make any mistakes, he’s kind of got it for the time being,” Norris said.
The fight to Verstappen may be further ahead than recent races, and it’ll likely be a matter of keeping Mercedes and Ferrari behind. Only 26 points separate McLaren and Ferrari heading into Sunday.
Mercedes knows its fight is with Ferrari in Austria
The past two races have brought a boost to Mercedes, which has been a couple of years in the making. After so many supposed breakthroughs with its car concept under these regulations, only for them to quickly fade, it finally believes it has made the step to give Lewis Hamilton and George Russell the confidence they have long craved behind the wheel.
Russell scored a shock pole in Canada and led the first two laps in Spain, proving the Mercedes car was strong on two different tracks. He finished fourth in Saturday’s sprint before grabbing third on the grid for Sunday ahead of Carlos Sainz after moving up a spot after Oscar Piastri’s last lap time was deleted due to a track limits breach.
It was a promising sign for Mercedes, but Russell was quick to cool expectations of getting in the fight for victory. “It feels like we’re still a little bit behind McLaren,” Russell said after qualifying. “Max and Red Bull were flying today. (But) it’s definitely going in the right direction for us.”
Hamilton was a little less upbeat, two spots further back in fifth, and instead focused on the gap to the front. “The notion of us potentially winning a race this year… when you get a half-second gap like today, it makes it a little bit further down the road,” he said.
Ferrari felt it had missed an opportunity today. In his bid to try and claw back some time lost earlier in the lap, Charles Leclerc went off during his final lap, leaving him down in sixth. “I’m a bit disappointed, especially because the team (had) two, three races where we had a tough time,” Leclerc said. “I felt like today was an opportunity to be back in the top three.” He agreed with Russell that Verstappen and Norris would be out of reach, boiling it down to a battle to complete the podium.
Keeping Piastri back down in P7 will be tricky for Mercedes and Ferrari, given how quick the McLaren has looked this weekend. However, in the tight constructors’ battle, and more importantly in the development race, this will indicate who the third-quickest team is.
Ricciardo is out to quiet critics in Austria. (Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)
Ricciardo bids to prove – and score – a point
The buzz around Daniel Ricciardo’s future and the growing pressure to perform at RB was a big story coming into this weekend, and he wasn’t far from quieting some of that noise on Saturday.
Just 0.015 seconds separated Ricciardo from Q3, and he sounded frustrated on the radio after he crossed the line. It was nevertheless a decent step up from Barcelona, where the car’s upgrade package underperformed (team CEO Peter Bayer described it as a “belly flop” on Friday) and led to some experiments yesterday.
Ricciardo said after the session he felt the car’s package was working better this weekend, even if it wasn’t ready to reach Q3 on pure pace. He’ll start 11th on Sunday, three spots ahead of Yuki Tsunoda after out-qualifying him for only the third time this season — something the Australian took as a positive sign.
“Everyone acknowledges he’s got very good one-lap pace,” Ricciardo said. “But the teammate battle is obviously one that’s closely watched and today (I was) obviously happy to put some laps together and maybe keep everyone a little more quiet.”
The best way for Ricciardo to do that would be to find the consistency missing for so much of this year. He was strong in Canada and felt Spain was a decent weekend despite ending up 16th through the team’s struggles. In Austria, he’ll be in a spot to try and hook a couple of points that could go a long way to silencing his doubters.
What type of recovery is possible for Pérez?
It’s no secret that the second Red Bull driver has been struggling lately. The gap between Pérez and Verstappen is the latest indication.
The two had the biggest qualifying gap compared to the rest of the grid on Saturday: 0.888 seconds between Verstappen’s pole position time and Pérez’s lap that landed him P8. The Mexican driver’s season started encouragingly, and his confidence was evident as he had four podium finishes in the opening six races. But from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix on, Pérez began sliding further back in qualifying, impacting the Sunday battles.
“We need Checo in the mix. And he knows that. And the team knows that,” Horner said in Spain. “And if he’s on the back end of the top eight, you lose strategic options, whether you split it or so on; Checo in the first four/five races this year was fantastic – we just need to get him back into that headspace.”
When asked what’s changed between the beginning of the season and now, Horner said, “I think that he’s had a couple of difficult races. And things haven’t gone his way, and he’s a confidence-driven driver.”
2024 #AustrianGP 🇦🇹 Qualifying Gap#F1 #Formula1 pic.twitter.com/KXQbmyVyVj
— F1Visualized (@f1visualized) June 29, 2024
Pérez secured four points after an eighth-place finish last weekend in Spain, climbing back after starting 11th. This weekend, he’s set to line up eighth for Red Bull’s home race, facing an uphill battle with how tight the margins are. However, his qualifying session wasn’t optimal because he essentially started on the backfoot after using all of his tires ahead of Q3.
“Everything was so tight that, unfortunately, we ended up using up more tires than we wanted, and we arrived in Q3 without any tires,” Pérez said. “Given how the margins were, I think I was four-tenths from P2, and I was with a scrubbed tire. So I think today we could have done a lot better, but unfortunately, I think we were not safe enough to save a set into qualifying.”
Still, with the scrubbed set, Pérez was close to the pace of Mercedes and Ferrari, setting the stage for what is anticipated to be a tight battle.
Top photo: JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images; Mark Thompson/Getty Images
