There was a brief moment — a very brief moment — in which Max Verstappen’s weekend appeared to be hanging by a thread.
It was barely halfway through the sprint round’s sole practice session, and suddenly his car lost power. ‘Engine fault’ flashed up on his dash as he exited the final corner, and he slowed to a crawl down the front straight.
Some quick thinking from the Dutchman and his pit wall rescued the situation. With red flags flying, he rolled gently backwards down the sloped straight towards a gate in the fence, where he was harmlessly pushed back to his garage for diagnostics.
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The fault? A simple sensor failure from running over the kerbs. He was free to complete practice with the rest of the field.
It’s impossible to know how much of a difference this incident might have made had it happened elsewhere around the lap, where the car couldn’t have been recovered.
But it meant the team’s perfect start to the high-pressure, fast-paced sprint round remained intact.
For the first time in weeks, practice wasn’t spent troubleshooting a recalcitrant car struggling for stability. With just one practice session before sprint qualifying, such problems could have been terminal to the pursuit of victory.
Instead the car rolled out already in its sweet spot, allowing Verstappen to harness its potential.
“I am happy as we started off the day well and the car was in a good window,” he said. “Heading into qualifying, the car was really strong, and I could push.
“We were quick in the high speed, which is important round here, and hopefully we can keep that going tomorrow.
“Looking to the sprint race tomorrow, this will give us an early indication of how the pace of the car will be for the race, but all in all, it was definitely a good start, and I am looking forward to the rest of the weekend.”
But it’s also telling that even with an almost perfect start to the weekend, McLaren was in position to apply maximum pressure and almost pinched sprint pole all the same.
McLAREN GAINS CONTINUE
McLaren arrived in Austria as one of the few teams with new parts, headlined by an updated front wing that it hopes will further improve its long-running weakness in slow-speed corners.
A look at the telemetry shows the MCL38 is still lacking relative to the RB20 in the slowest corners of this track, but not by much, losing around 0.15 seconds in each of turn 1, 3 and 4.
But the car was set up to gain that back down the straights with a skinnier rear wing that meant Norris was quicker exiting all those turns, almost zeroing the deficit on acceleration.
It’s here, though, that we see a key strength of Red Bull Racing’s package.
Its more efficient aerodynamics has allowed it to run with more rear wing. It’s made it draggier on acceleration, but with DRS open — and there are three DRS zones around this tiny circuit — it starts to pull away from the McLaren again, an astute trade-off.
But even then we’re talking about the narrowest of margins — around 0.02 seconds before hitting the brakes each time.
The moment that sealed the deal was all Verstappen.
Equipped with that better rear wing, the Dutchman fangs it out of turn 7, the tricky downhill off-camber corner in the middle of the circuit. His boldness through here is such that it beats the McLaren’s better acceleration out of the corner, earning him a crucial 0.115-second buffer to work with through the penultimate two tuns that keeps him 0.093 ahead under acceleration to the chequered flag.
“It must have been a nice lap by Max,” Norris said, admitting he could have got more out of himself and the car.
“I never got quite comfortable probably until my final lap, so I’m happy with that.”
But it meant he was confident of a strong showing on Saturday morning.
“A good position for the race tomorrow,” he said. “From what we see at the minute, yes [we can fight for the win].”
It might have been just sprint qualifying, but again we’re seeing McLaren and Red Bull Racing are close enough for the driver to make all the difference in what’s fast becoming an epic struggle.
Oscar Piastri was also impressive but less polished. Summing his best sectors would have produced a time quick enough to challenge Norris, but a mistake at turn 3 was costly, leaving him adrift.
Still, launching from P3 on the clean side of the grid gives him a chance — and gives McLaren two shots to one at victory, with Sergio Pérez stuck down in an increasingly characteristically disappointing seventh.
RED BULL NON-COMMITTAL ON RICCIARDO FUTURE
The weekend of Daniel Ricciardo’s 250th grand prix start has commenced poorly.
First Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko foreshadowed his early sacking to promote reserve driver Liam Lawson into his place.
Then Ricciardo did little to help himself by getting himself knocked out of sprint qualifying SQ1 on Friday.
True, he was only 0.024 seconds behind Tsunoda, who ended up only two places ahead of him in the order. But close enough isn’t good enough for Ricciardo anymore. The bottom line is the Aussie was eliminated at the first hurdle when his teammate wasn’t.
But the real damage came when Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner and RB CEO Peter Bayer appeared in an FIA press conference.
Both were asked about Ricciardo’s hold on his seat, and both were pointedly noncommittal.
“He knew this was a lifeline for him,” Horner said. “It’s now for him to make use of that.
“I’m sure by his own admission the first part of the season didn’t go to plan, but he’s started to show signs of the old Daniel. We saw it in Miami — we saw it in the first part of the weekend there. We saw it in Montreal.
“But in Formula 1 there’s always pressure — he knows that better than anyone — and particularly in Red Bull. When they’re all Red Bull racing drivers, there’s always pressure regarding any seat. But Daniel is more than aware of that.”
Horner was evasive when asked specifically whether Ricciardo could be axed during the mid-season break.
“I think anything regarding drivers is going to be dealt with in-house before we talk to the media about it,” he said.
“As we see, in Formula 1 things are always fluid.”
Bayer said that Ricciardo has “brought a whole new energy and spirit into the team” and has “been extremely helpful in supporting Yuki”, but even he stopped short of expressing confidence in his position.
“Just to add on what Christian perfectly summarised, Liam is part of the team,” he said. “He’s our test driver, he’s in the simulator. As most of you know, he’ll be in the [testing of previous cars program].
“We do our job to develop young drivers, but the decision on the second seat will be taken quietly, and we’re not in a hurry.
“It’s part of our job, also as a mission from the shareholders, to develop drivers, and that’s what we currently do. But certainly, as Christian said, this is about performance.
“We do luckily have a couple of options with the junior program, but we’re also not in a hurry to take a decision for next year’s line-up.
“We’ve confirmed Yuki, which was very important for us, and the focus currently, honestly, as you can tell, is on the car and to go into the summer break and have a quiet discussion.”
The lukewarm popularity of the sprint format means it’s relatively easy to shake off a lacklustre result, but it’s clearer than ever that Ricciardo will need a much bigger performance in Saturday qualifying to quieten growing speculation that his 250th start could be one of his last.
Ricciardo set for the axe at RB? | 00:38
NEW AND OLD PROBLEMS COST FERRARI
Ferrari is scrambling for a way to kickstart its season after a couple of poor rounds, but sprint qualifying in Austria gave it little joy.
Charles Leclerc failed to set at time in SQ3 owing to an engine shutdown as he attempted to exit pit lane. There was some debate between him and the pit wall about whether he had stalled the car — he said the engine had cut off completely, which isn’t how anti-stall works — and by the time he got the car restarted, there wasn’t enough time to get around the track and start his flying lap before the chequered flag fell.
Carlos Sainz, meanwhile, had a cleaner run that illustrated a key weakness of the car and a key hurdle to performance in the sprint format.
His lap up until turn 7 was fairly competitive with Verstappen. As they both hit the brakes, he was only around 0.15 seconds off the pace.
But then two things happened.
Verstappen bossed the corner, which was key to him getting pole.
And Ferrari’s bouncing problem reared its head again.
Figured to be the car’s biggest issue in Barcelona, the high-speed section between turn 7 and the chequered flag was encumbered by the same porpoising phenomenon that sapped performance from the SF-24 last week.
The gap blew out by almost 0.3 seconds in just this final sector of the circuit.
Ferrari also appeared to be caught out by the sprint-only qualifying rules that require medium tyres to be used in SQ1 and SQ2, with softs then available for the pole battle.
The car had been reasonably quick in SQ1 on the yellow-marked rubber but failed to keep up on the reds, with tyre wear also likely playing into the deficit in the final sector.
With the soft rated for only 12 laps, it may not be such a problem for the rest of the grand prix, but the sprint race will be indicative of whether there’s any hope for a better result in the main event on Sunday.
‘What the hell happened guys?!’ | 01:41
MIDFIELD GROWS MORE INTRIGUING
Aston Martin and RB both wanted to bounce back from poor showings in Spain this weekend, but instead Austria served up much of the same for both.
Tsunoda and Ricciardo will launch from 14th and 16th respectively on an afternoon that generated few answers about its unconvincing upgrade package.
The two drivers had cars in different specifications, with both mixing and matching old parts, parts from the Spanish Grand Prix upgrade and parts made for this weekend.
Ricciardo required massive set-up changes at the end of practice for qualifying that meant he failed to nail his first flying lap. Tsunoda then spun into the gravel at the end of SQ1 and damaged his floor.
There’ll be much more to learn on Saturday.
At Aston Martin, Lance Stroll outqualified Fernando Alonso — the Canadian is now down just 6-7 in all qualifying sessions for the season — to start 12th and 13th. Kevin Magnussen, fighting a seemingly increasingly losing battle to keep his seat, led the way for Haas in 11th, just 0.05 seconds short of SQ3. Both Alpine drivers cracked the top 10 again.
The sprint format has a propensity for generating slightly random results owing to the lack of practice time, particularly at a point in the season when most of these midfield teams are grappling with upgrades and a changing form guide.
But given these results largely echo those from Spain, this could be the beginning of a trend, and it’ll be fascinating to see if it continues to qualifying for the grand prix later today.