Red Bull’s Max Verstappen secures pole position at Austrian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen followed up his sprint victory by securing pole position for Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix.

On Red Bull’s home turf in Spielberg, and cheered on by 40,000 travelling Dutch fans, Verstappen blew away his rivals to take top spot.

The world champion produced a scintillating lap of the shortest track on the Formula One calendar to finish 0.404 seconds clear of McLaren’s Lando Norris, with George Russell third for Mercedes. Carlos Sainz finished fourth with Lewis Hamilton fifth.

QUALIFYING CLASSIFICATION

Confirmation of Verstappen's dominance

Piastri was initially third fastest but had his final lap time deleted for track limits and drops to P7#F1 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/NvKNhttN3H

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 29, 2024

“It is a great feeling and the team has worked hard to make the car competitive,” said Verstappen after landing his fourth straight pole at the Red Bull Ring. “This is a great statement and hopefully we can show that again tomorrow in the race.”

Norris led for one corner in the earlier sprint race before he left the door open to allow Verstappen to sneak back past.

“Max was in a league of his own and clearly much quicker than us,” said Norris after qualifying.

“We are going to need something extra to go our way in order to beat Max tomorrow. I will try, and I will do a better job than I did this morning. It is a long race and anything can happen so let’s see.”

The build-up to the 11th round has been dominated by Jos Verstappen’s row with Christian Horner following the former’s withdrawal from a parade of the sport’s legends prior to Sunday’s 71-lap race.

However, Verstappen – although acknowledging that the public spat between his father and team boss “hasn’t been nice” for everyone involved at Red