QUALIFYING

At the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix, Formula 1 finally got through a qualifying session without having a red-flag disruption. And the title contenders did things rather differently in Q3.

When the green lights came on at the start of Q3, Mercedes had Lewis Hamilton waiting at the end of the pitlane for an immediate run on the softs as the only driver on track. That resulted in a 1m04.208s. Next up was Max Verstappen’s key difference to previous qualifying sessions. A week before, he had explained how getting through Q2 on the medium tyres, as he, Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas did again last weekend, often leaves drivers slightly undercooked come Q3. At the French GP Verstappen’s pole-winning time came on his second Q3 lap, but this time he did it immediately (although his second lap would also have been enough for pole), posting a 1m03.841s.

Verstappen said he was so “fired up” reacting to criticism from an “upset” Gianpiero Lambiase that he had pushed “a bit harder on that first run in Q3”. The reason Verstappen’s engineer was annoyed was because he had abandoned the “sighter” lap Red Bull and Mercedes regularly give their drivers late in Q2 as cover in case their medium-shod times are under threat and to get them prepared for Q3. Verstappen had done so after encountering traffic at Turn 1 on that lap.

Returning to Hamilton, his early start to Q3 ultimately gave him three goes and, running slightly offset to the rest of the shootout contenders, he posted a 1m04.067s, which would leave him third, between

Valtteri Bottas and the starring Lando Norris.

Mercedes had just enough time to service Hamilton with another set of softs for the final fliers, but he opted not to wait at the rear of the pack and passed Norris, Sergio

Perez, Fernando Alonso,

Pierre Gasly and Bottas, who had also jumped the queue, on his final out-lap as they lined up on the slower preparation tours. Perez said this “ruined my lap a bit”, as he ended up fifth behind Norris, starting on softs after Red Bull split its strategy in Q2. Hamilton was wary of low tyre temperatures resulting from waiting in the pack, but his march backfired.

By picking up dirt in going offline to jump ahead, and then overdriving when he realised he was down, that led to a slip off the road at the penultimate corner and exposed him to Bottas’s improvement. The Finn’s first Q3 run had been compromised by Yuki Tsunoda getting in his way, without a warning from his team, at Turn 4. The resulting three-place grid penalty put the Alphatauri driver down to 11th and boosted Williams’s George Russell, who’d been 0.008s from reaching Q3, one spot ahead.

“PICKING UP DIRT BY GOING OFFLINE TO JUMP AHEAD THEN OVERDRIVING LED TO A SLIP OFF THE ROAD”