Key events
Without the Verstappen crash, we might well have an all-Mercedes front row again; a sheepish Antonelli conceded that Russell’s figures were superior but believed he was on track to take second before aborting the lap. Ferrari, with their latest upgrades, were tipped to do well but maybe a bit better was expected. What happened? Perhaps their improvement vanished literally into thin air: Spielberg is 660m above sea level.
Hamilton addressed the issue:
“I think this weekend we’ve not been confident that we could fight for a win. We knew coming into this weekend it would be tough with the long straights we’ve got here, and the deficit looked bigger than other circuits that we’ve been at. Maybe it’s altitude, I’m not sure.” AP
For comparison, next week’s race at Silverstone is 153m, Barcelona was about 130m, and Monaco might as well be under water.
Preamble
There are plenty of chaotic F1 races but relatively few chaotic qualifying sessions. The finish to Saturday’s Q3 was something else, with George Russell snatching pole from Charles Leclerc but everyone assuming his time would be wiped out – through no fault of his own – because of Max Verstappen’s crash. But the British Mercedes driver had played it perfectly, lifting in response to single yellows for long enough to pass the incident but not too long to extend his lap time past Leclerc’s mark. Eventually double yellow flags, deleting lap times, were shown, but the officials wondered for just enough seconds if single yellows were sufficient to cover off the hazard.
The misdirection came first from his teammate Kimi Antonelli misinterpreting the yellow lights as doubles and aborting his lap, and then from the FIA computer feed showing lap times deleted for both Mercedes drivers – but, as it turned out, those auto-deletions were for the slow-down laps, not the hot ones.
So here we are, with Russell on a desperately needed pole, Leclerc alongside him, Hamilton behind him and Antonelli in fourth. Russell badly needs a win after slipping behind his current and former teammates in the standings, but fortunately he is in the best place from which to achieve that.
Join me for updates. Formation lap at 2pm BST.
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