Mercs dominate, close fight behind, but Ferraris flounder — Austrian Grand Prix Qualifying Report
After more than 8 months of waiting, Formula One was back in action for its first qualifying session in its delayed and shortened 2020 season, taking place right within the Styrian mountains in the Red Bull Ring.
Practice gave certain clues about the relative pace of the new cars, but it’s only when the fuel load goes down to the minimum, engine modes are cranked up, and brand new soft tyres are bolted onto the car, do we see the true unbridled pace of these menacing monsters.
Going into qualifying, I was expecting nothing less than a front row lockout for the 6-time title-winning Mercedes, now free from the uncertainty about its innovative DAS system after it was ruled legal on Friday night. Mercedes headed all 3 practice sessions one-two, and judging by the words of closest rivals Red Bull yesterday, they were just in another league. But the question is, which Mercedes? Also, I was interested in the resurgent Racing Point, which had a car in the top 4 of all practice sessions and have clearly made a step forward with its new challenger, which had been heavily modelled after the 2019 title-winning Mercedes car. It seemed like they had gotten a jump on the rest of the midfield and could trouble Albon in the second Red Bull for 4th place if everything went smoothly. Lastly, Ferrari seemed to be struggling for pace with lackluster results in practice, and with the team sounding downbeat in interviews, it certainly seemed like they would not be troubling Mercedes for pole position unlike last year.
Post-qualifying
The car on pole position was not unexpected, but the identity of the pole man was a slight surprise, as Valtteri Bottas usurped his star-studded teammate Lewis Hamilton to pole position, albeit by a razor-thin 0.012s margin, echoing the start the 2019 season where Bottas took pole in Australia. Austria doesn’t seem to be a track Hamilton particularly excels in, having been beaten to pole by Bottas in 2017 and 2018, and this result gives Bottas the perfect chance to send a message about his serious title ambitions with a win in the race tomorrow. Hamilton may not appear too disappointed in the interviews, but the fact the Bottas snuck from behind him during all of practice to pip him to pole should be slightly annoying. If there is anything to fault about Hamilton’s near-perfect season last year, it would be his qualifying performances, as he did not convincingly beat Bottas, so Hamilton has to work harder to gain qualifying supremacy on Bottas, especially given that we will get a deja-vu race weekend in Austria next week.
Despite the pre-race hype, it was disappointing for people hoping for a closely-fought 2020 season that Red Bull’s Max Verstappen could only qualify half a second behind the Mercedes on F1’s shortest track laptime-wise. Moreover their time was closer to the team behind (McLaren) than to Mercedes (Verstappen later blamed balance issues for the large gap to Mercedes, suggesting that he could have been closer). While we can pin our hopes on Red Bull’s race pace possibly being better than the Mercedes (as we did last year, when Hamilton outqualified Verstappen by 0.2s as well), the extent of the qualifying gap does bode ominously for the rest of the season.
McLaren, especially Norris, outperformed expectations by qualifying 4th, their best qualifying result since Jenson Button clinched 3rd in a wet qualifying in Austria 2016. That was a surprise especially after McLaren had said on Friday that they expected to be slower than Racing Point. Given the strong practice timings, 6th and 9th for the pink Racing Point cars could even be said to be slightly disappointing, but this is still a much improved performance, especially compared to last year when both drivers failed to get out of Q1. Additionally, Perez having matched the second Red Bull driver of Albon to the thousandth of a second further illustrates how close the team is to the sharp end of the grid this year.
On the other hand, the notable absence from the front of the grid is Ferrari, who were pole position just one year ago . Leclerc qualified 7th, which could have been worse had Bottas’ yellow flag not prevented Ricciardo and other drivers from improving on their hot laps. Vettel did not even make it out of Q2, marking the first time he has failed to make Q3 as a Ferrari driver on pure pace. On qualifying pace, the Ferrari has dropped to possibly the 6th fastest car, with Renault, Racing Point and McLaren cars all eclipsing it in Q2. Fans will certainly hope that the massive upgrades promised for the 3rd race in Hungary bring the desired improvements. But failing that, the shortened season, combined with the cars remaining same for next year, means that the future is not bright for the Maranello outfit.
That said, the cars besides Mercedes were incredibly close in the qualifying, signalling the end of the hegemony of the top 3 teams that we have grown used to in the past 3 seasons. The 3rd to 12th positions in Q2 were all covered by half a second. This means that battle behind the Mercedes and Verstappen could be extremely tasty in this season, and this is definitely something I hope to cover more through analysis of their qualifying and race strategies.
