LECLERC TAKES AUSTRIA POLE HAMILTON PENALISED

Charles Leclerc took on the might of Mercedes single handidly during the final stages of qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix as team mate Sebastian Vettel remained firmly entrenched in his garage with a mechanical issue. For the second time in 2019, Leclerc proved to be more than a match for Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas and claimed pole position for the race.

Vettel’s problems were truly out of his control, after he suffered an issue on the air pressure line to the car’s engine.The issue was discovered on Vettel’s SF90 at the tail end of Q2. While Ferrari’s mechanics worked feverishly through Q3 to get the problem resolved, it soon became clear that the issue was terminal, with a resigned Vettel climbing out of his car as his rivals were still circling.

“Obviously the car was broken so we couldn’t fire it up and go, so we lost parts of Q2 and then Q3 completely,” said Vettel. “We fairly quickly made the decision to change, but it’s not so easy. We had to obviously take the bodywork off and it’s not so easy to get there. The guys did everything they could, but we couldn’t do it in time. “I knew that if we fixed it, most likely there would be one run, so I was trying to focus solely on that. But it didn’t happen.”looked supreme in Spielberg since FP2, there were scenes of jubilation in Ferrari garage as Leclerc’s pole was confirmed. But despite his delight, the man himself is staying grounded, mindful perhaps of Bahrain earlier this year when he dominated the race weekend up until an engine problem robbed him of a likely win.

“The car felt amazing actually,” said Leclerc. “In FP1 I struggled a little bit but then we did some changes and from FP2 it was quite good and a big pleasure to drive this car on the limit. It just felt great and I’m very happy to bring the pole position back home – but tomorrow we need to finish the job.“We changed the car a bit for the first lap in Q3. I knew it would be a compromise for the first sector but it helped in the third sector, which is nice to see.”

Hamilton secured a front-row slot for Sunday’s race – although he was unable to get within two and a half tenths of a rampant Charles Leclerc, who secured the second pole of his career. But Hamilton already had the threat of an investigation hanging over his head, after he’d run off the track at Turn 3 during the first segment of qualifying in an attempt to get out of the way of the Alfa Romeo of Raikkonen, leading the Finn to angrily gesticulate at the five-time champion.

The stewards had carried out their investigation post-session, Hamilton was duly handed a three-place grid drop and one-penalty point on his FIA Super Licence – though because of the way in which penalties are applied in sequence, he only drops from P2 to P4.

For his part, Hamilton admitted he was at fault. “Totally deserved the penalty today and have no problem accepting it,” he said on social media. “Was a mistake on my behalf and I take full responsibility for it. It wasn’t intentional. Anyway, tomorrow is another day and an opportunity to rise.”

Hamilton’s penalty was a bonus for McLaren, with Lando Norris promoted to fourth on the grid, his best F1 qualifying result to date. Norris also benefited from a five-place grid drop for Haas’ Kevin Magnussen  after the team decided to change Magnussen’s gearbox.

Renault continued to struggle in qualifying after Daniel Ricciardo has recorded the 8th fastest time in FP1 only to drop down the order in the following sessions through to qualifying.

“Austria has been one of our more challenging weekends, and we struggled all day today. It just wasn’t happening for us and we couldn’t find the pace,” said Daniel Ricciardo. “It’s a shame as we had a nice run of Q3 appearances in recent races. We’ll gain some positions with grid penalties tomorrow, but before then we need to find out what went wrong today.”

Alan Permane, Renault F1 Sporting Director maintained a sense of optimism for the race.

“Spielberg is a tough track for us, and it’s been a difficult day,” Permane admitted. “We’ve struggled all weekend with the car in the high-speed corners. We did make improvements from yesterday, but we were not quick enough today. Looking ahead to tomorrow, our high fuel pace on Friday was better than our low fuel runs. Typically, at the moment, we race better than we qualify. It’s certainly not over and we’ll do all we can to get both cars into the points.”

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