F1 Austrian Grand Prix LIVE: George Russell claims stunning win after Lando Norris and Max Verstappen crash
Follow live updates from the Red Bull Ring as Verstappen starts on pole position at Red Bull’s home race
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.
“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.”
Follow live updates from the Austrian Grand Prix with The Independent
Oscar Piastri on deleted lap time:
“For me, it’s embarrassing. We do all this work for track limits and I didn’t even go off the track, probably my best turn 6 and it gets deleted. I don’t know why they’ve spent millions on the final two corners and there’s still somewhere you can go off with track limits.
“I was right on the limit of the track, we’ve had so much effort trying to get rid of these problems, there’s no reason this corner should be an issue with track limit when you stay on the track, which I did.”
“Max looked to be on another level, we’ll try our best. We saw in the sprint the tyres were overheating quickly, makes life tough but we’ll try our best.”
George Russell after qualifying third:
“The car feels really good, we’ve got a fight on our hands with Ferrari, McLaren bit ahead, but good progress with us.
“Happy to be in P3, we compromised qualifying a little bit to help the race tomorrow, McLaren have the edge of us. Third race in a row for top three in qualifying.
“Verstappen and Norris were pretty dicey in the sprint race so hopefully I can sneak through on the inside but I think our race will be behind us unfortunately.”
Lando Norris after qualifying second:
“It’s as much as we could do today, Max in a league of his own today. It’s good enough, I’ll take it.
“When you look at the pace today, we’re going to have to give it a lot and something to go our way. I’ll do a better job this morning for sure, usually we’re better in the races than for qualifying.”
Max Verstappen on pole:
“The car felt a lot better today, every run was on point, it was very good out there.
“It’s been a while since we were on pole, the car have been working really hard to make the car more competitive, hopefully we can have a good race.
“It’s always nice to race, hopefully will be a good battle tomorrow but very happy with how the car was performing today.”
TOP-10 IN AUSTRIAN GP QUALIFYING:
1. Max Verstappen
2. Lando Norris
3. George Russell
4. Carlos Sainz
5. Lewis Hamilton
6. Charles Leclerc
7. Oscar Piastri
8. Sergio Perez
9. Nico Hulkenberg
10. Esteban Ocon
Oscar Piastri loses third place!
Track limits violation from Oscar Piastri and he loses third place!
That puts Russell up to third and Piastri drops to seventh!
Max Verstappen on pole for the Austrian Grand Prix!
Verstappen goes even quicker and is on pole position by four-tenths to Lando Norris, who pips Oscar Piastri!
4-10: Russell, Sainz, Hamilton, Leclerc, Perez, Hulkenberg, Ocon
Leclerc had a pretty big off on his final lap and heads into the gravel at turn six!
Verstappen: “On fire in qualifying, car was really strong!”
![](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/06/29/16/GettyImages-2159815045.jpg)
Lewis Hamilton under investigation after the session
The Mercedes driver ran over a car jack as he left the garage prior to his first lap - and the Brit has been noted for an unsafe release.
Anyway, three minutes to go - fresh tyres everywhere ahead of the final laps of quaifying!
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