“Everything fell apart” in F1 Austrian GP qualifying’s hot conditions

Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 qualifying session for the Austrian Grand Prix was hampered significantly when Pierre Gasly spun ahead of him on his last lap – but believes Red Bull’s performance had already waned amid the changing conditions.

After FP3, Verstappen was only 0.2s behind Lando Norris’ top-line pace and looked to be an outside bet for pole, but the gulf to the McLaren had grown to over 0.4s during Q1 and Q2 – which he put down to the hotter temperatures and changing wind direction later in the day.

Following the opening runs in Q3, Verstappen was only sixth, but had been among the early takers for a final lap in an effort to improve his position on Sunday’s grid.

But his last attempt was nixed by Gasly’s Turn 10 spin, which brought out the yellow flags. Verstappen did not encounter Gasly immediately, but the yellows had lingered long enough to force him into backing off ahead of the final corner.

He was not left with enough time to get a final lap in, and thus dropped a further position when Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson trickled past for sixth by 0.003s.

Verstappen said that he was reasonably happy with his car in FP3 and that the team had barely touched his set-up between sessions, and added that the 47C track temperatures had started to sap performance away from his RB21.

“The conditions for sure are not that good for our car,” rued Verstappen. “For sure in terms of gap, I think it was very big. Certainly in qualifying everything just felt a lot worse.

“Not a lot [of expectations in the race]. The hot conditions, they don’t help as well and so far this year we’ve never really been more competitive in the race than qualifying as well, so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Asked if there was any relation to the updates that Red Bull introduced at the Austria weekend, Verstappen believed that it was not the case.

“I don’t want to talk about the upgrades because I think it was not only the upgrade that caused all this,” the four-time world champion added.

“It’s just suddenly, we really took a step back, which is not what you want in qualifying. 

“We didn’t touch the car [after FP3], just very tiny little changes that shouldn’t influence the car balance. I mean that’s all manageable, but suddenly with the higher track temps and more wind, everything just fell apart.”

Polesitter Norris said that, although Verstappen was starting from seventh, he was not going to count the Red Bull driver out of the reckoning for victory on Sunday. 

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Andy Hone / LAT Images via Getty Images

He added that he expected Red Bull to be more in the hunt this weekend, but noted it was too long a season to be discarding Verstappen from the championship battle.

“Max has been our main contender for every race this season,” said Norris, who is second to team-mate Oscar Piastri in the championship.

“I think just because he’s had a slightly worse qualifying today, I’m definitely not going to count him out of the race tomorrow and definitely not going to count him out for the rest of the season.

“They brought upgrades; maybe they’ve not worked as well as they wanted, or maybe they have – I don’t know. But I think we expected them to be quicker here this weekend. They’ve still looked pretty good for the most part this weekend.

“We as team-mates [Norris and Piastri] are probably the main rivals of each other at the minute, but at the same time – unless he’s out of the race, I don’t think we’re ever going to take Max out of the equation. It’s still a very long season.”

Additional reporting by Ronald Vording