THE ROAD TO POLE
THE ROAD TO POLE
On Friday, Max Verstappen took pole position for Red Bull's home race. That's because this weekend is a sprint round, with a 24-lap race on Saturday to set the GP grid, although 'pole position' is awarded to the fastest driver in today's session. The pole was sealed at the end of Q3, after two red flags generated by the two Mercedes cars in separate incidents.
Like all the other drivers, Verstappen used the soft P Zero Red tire from start to finish qualifying. After some rain overnight, which had the effect of 'resetting' the track, qualifying began at 5pm local time with sunshine and temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius ambient and 36 degrees on the track, plus some gusts of wind.
The Pirelli Pole Position Award was presented by Mathias Lauda, the second son of Austrian hero Niki Lauda. Like his father, Mathias also became a racing driver, but concentrated his career on GT racing. He became a factory driver for Aston Martin and competed in all the major endurance races, including Le Mans, Spa, and the Nurburgring. Mathias now combines his racing career with work for one of Austria's leading TV channels, Servus TV.
Mario Isola, sports director:
Formula 2 and Formula 3
The P Zero Purple super-soft tire was the tire of choice for Formula 2 qualifying (named together with the P Zero Yellow medium this weekend). ART Grand Prix driver Frederik Vesti took his debut pole, by just 0s035 from Hitech's Juri Vips. The other Hitech car, of Marcus Armstrong, will start tomorrow's reverse grid race from pole, having qualified 10th.
Hitech's Isaack Hadjar took his first pole in Formula 3, using the soft P Zero Red tires: nominated for the first time all year this weekend. Finding a gap in traffic was key, with tire warm-ups sometimes compromised by drivers not getting a clean lap on exit.