Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Red Bull Ring, 2025

Max Verstappen will start the Austrian Grand Prix from seventh on the grid but Red Bull believe he was quick enough to start third.

He was forced to abandon his final flying run in qualifying when Pierre Gasly spun ahead of him at the last corner. Verstappen only had a single set of fresh soft tyres for the session and was improving on his previous lap time, set on scrubbed tyres, when he had to back off.

His race engineer Simon Rennie – who is standing in for Gianpiero Lambiase this weekend – told Verstappen he was on course to take third on the grid.

“I predict you would have been on a [one minute] 4.50 which would have been just good enough for P3, I think,” said Rennie. “But unfortunately we didn’t get to do that.”

Verstappen backed off after spotting marshals waving yellow flags as he approached turn nine. “Luckily I saw it, because there’s no indication on the dash and everything,” he said. “But we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Lando Norris took pole position with a lap of 1’03.971. Verstappen said the fact he wasn’t close to pole position made it easier to accept his misfortune.

“It would have been close, potentially, up until the yellow flag,” he told Sky. “But that’s still miles off pole you know so at the end it’s not really that painful.”

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The Red Bull driver was only two tenths of a second slower than Norris in final practice but said his car performance was much worse in qualifying.

“FP3 wasn’t too bad, but somehow in qualifying it just completely disappeared,” he said. There was not a single corner where I felt happy with the car. That is of course then a big problem in qualifying.”

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