Charles Leclerc was less than a tenth of a second behind Max Verstappen in the battle for pole at the Austrian Grand Prix. Monaco teammate Ferrari Carlos Sainz qualified third. Both drivers of the Scuderia are satisfied with the result and hope to confirm the pace in Sunday’s race.
Charles Leclerc (2nd): “It’s nice to finally have a decent qualifying and to be back on the front row of the grid. The car drives slightly better than in several previous Grands Prix. In the first and second part of qualifying I gradually added and in the final I collected a circle.
I did everything I wanted on the last lap and got really close to Max. Today it wasn’t enough to lead, but we didn’t expect to be so close to Red Bull, so this result is a noticeable step forward.
In Montreal we had good race pace. We don’t have enough stability, so we won’t find out until Sunday if we have the speed we had in Canada. In the distance, Red Bull is faster, so it will be difficult, but if we can make life difficult for them, then we will do everything for this.”
Carlo Sainz (3rd): “Good result – I think the team had a great qualifying and I definitely feel we’ve made some progress lately. In qualifying we were closer to Max than expected, so we can be happy.
There is still a lot of work to do this weekend, but at least today we secured a good starting position on Sunday, so we will try to get on the podium with Charles.
Tomorrow is a new day, different weather, different track conditions – the result may be different, so it’s important to stay focused. As the closed park regime is already in place, we cannot change the car’s settings, but we will study the details to see where we can improve.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
