Verstappen On Pole In Austria With Norris On Front Row

Calum Gill 15:30 03/07/2021

Max Verstappen will start from pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix, as Lando Norris secured his first ever front row start.

Norris of McLaren was only 0.048 seconds behind championship leader Verstappen, who was cheered on by the return to F1 of the Orange Army, his loyal supporters group from his native Netherlands. Verstappen's Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez put his car in third, ahead of the two Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton fourth and Valtteri Bottas fifth.

The two AlphaTauri's were sixth and seventh, with Pierre Gasly ahead of Yuki Tsunoda. Sebastian Vettel - who qualified eighth - faces a visit to the stewards after he held up Fernando Alonso in Q2. His Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll was tenth. George Russell had an outstanding session, with the 23-year-old getting his Williams into the final part of qualifying for the first time in three years of trying and will start ninth. 

Russell made it into the top 10 shoot-out despite using the medium tyre in the second part of qualifying, so he can gain the strategic advantage of starting the race on it. Russell beat both Ferraris, who were also on the medium tyre, Daniel Ricciardo's McLaren, Fernando Alonso's Alpine and Antonio Giovinazzi's Alfa-Romeo, all three of which were on the faster soft tyre. However, Alonso would have beaten Russell and knocked him out of the top 10 had he not been badly blocked by Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin on his final lap in second qualifying. 

-Full weekend results

Max Makes It Three In A Row

Verstappen continued where he left off after dominating the Styrian Grand Prix last weekend and was the man to beat throughout. He was disappointed with his own performance in the final part of qualifying but still had more than enough to keep him clear of everyone else.

"Q3 was pretty bad," Verstappen said. "I am of course happy to be first but not the way we got it. Something to look into but to be twice on pole here is nevertheless very good and hopefully we can finish it off tomorrow. Softer compounds compared to last week so it will be tough to manage them in the race but just try to focus on our own race and we will try to win it. It is never straight forward but we will see."

Norris qualified fourth on this track last weekend but excelled himself on Saturday. He was on course to snatch pole from Verstappen for much of his final lap, until the McLaren's lack of downforce compared to the Red Bull meant he dropped back fractionally in the final part of the lap. Norris said: "I feel epic. It was cool. I guess after last race I wanted to do that one more step. I did two more. It's nice, it puts us in a good position for tomorrow. Probably one of the best laps I've done. I don't know how far I was off pole, bit gutted I didn't get pole." 

The rest of the grid

Both of the Ferrari's failed to make it into Q2, with Carlos Sainz ahead of Charles Leclerc. Ricciardo will start 13th, ahead of Alonso and Giovinazzi. The exact same five drivers who were eliminated in Q1 last week failed to get out of the first session - albeit in a different order. Kimi Raikkonen was 16th for Alfa-Romeo, ahead of Esteban Ocon, who has been poor ever since signing a new contract with Alpine. Nicholas Latifi was 18th for Williams, with the two Haas cars of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin rounding out the order.

2021 Austrian Grand Prix Qualifying Classification