Lando Norris has been in such good form in Austria that the only person capable of depriving him of pole position was himself.
And this being Norris and this being the 2025 season, the chance of the Briton tripping over himself in Q3 was alarmingly real. It’s been the story of his season.
But at the Red Bull Ring he was in perfect harmony with himself and with the car. At a track he’s always loved, he sealed the deal to set himself up for what would be a revitalising victory on Sunday — so long as he can overcome a resurgent Ferrari and his title-leading teammate off the line.
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NORRIS TAKES MUCH-NEEDED POLE
Norris needed this one.
At one of his strongest circuits and equipped with upgrades designed specifically to improve his connection with the car, the Briton simply had to take pole position.
If he was going to mount a fightback after his clumsy Canada crash and after having bled points to title leader Oscar Piastri almost all season, it had to be here.
He answered that call emphatically.
Not only did he take pole position, but he did so with the biggest margin of the season — 0.521 seconds, an eternity around a lap that clocks in at barely over a minute.
In fact either of his Q3 laps would have been good enough for pole position. His final attempt, which lowered his benchmark by staggering 0.297 seconds, ended up being a flourish on what has been a perfect weekend to date.
“I think I improved in every corner and, especially around here, with the high speed in turn 6, 7, 9, and 10, especially in quali, you’ve got to commit, and it’s exciting and nerve-racking at the same time,” he said. “It’s rewarding when things go right like they did today, and to put the laps in that I did today, I was very happy with it.”
The context of this lap is extremely important.
Norris has been faster than his 22-point title deficit suggests, but his error rate has allowed Piastri to execute a 45-point turnaround since the Australian Grand Prix.
Principally those errors have come in Q3, when he’s chocked trying to string together a representative time.
After topping both practice sessions in which he took part and then Q1 and Q2, the stage was set for Norris to either exercise those demons or succumb to them.
He chose the former.
“It was definitely the most confident and comfortable I’ve been in terms of getting lap time out of the car and understanding that,” he said.
“I think it showed today that when I have those feelings — well, it’s still not all there, but more there than before — I can have a day like today.
“It shows that the feelings I’ve been requiring, the feelings that I’ve not been getting as easily, when they are more my way and more where I want them to be, I can put in better performances and have days like today.
“I think that’s reassuring for me, which is a very nice feeling.
“It was easily my best qualifying of the year from a delivery point of view from every single lap I did.”
But Norris isn’t getting ahead of himself. He’s been here before.
His Monaco qualifying blitz and victory were supposed to be his season’s turning point, having perfectly executed at the sport’s most high-pressure circuit, but he was then soundly beaten by Piastri in Spain and Canada subsequently.
Self-aware to a fault, the Briton isn’t prepared to call Austria a new dawn.
“It’s very satisfying, but it’s about consistency,” he said. “Everyone can be a hero in one weekend. It’s progress. It’s steps forward.
“I’m very happy with today, but it’s still a long journey. It’s a long season. The job I needed to do today I did. It doesn’t make up for the last few weekends, but I did it today, and that’s what mattered.
“I’m very satisfied and happy for putting it together when I needed to.
“This is one weekend, I’ve got to do it for another 13.”
PIASTRI CRUELLED BY YELLOWS
Title leader Piastri never looked likely to beat Norris to pole, but he’ll never know for certain thanks to yellow flags cancelling his final flying lap.
Piastri was rounding the final two corners on his warm-up lap when he encountered yellow flags for the spun-out Pierre Gasly at the start of the front straight.
Needing to lift and without the use of DRS, he was forced to abandon his final attempt.
“Lando’s been very quick all weekend, so it would have been a tough challenge,” he said “But I think we easily had enough pace in the car this weekend to be on the front row.
“It’s always a shame when you don’t even get the chance.”
Piastri had been 0.286 seconds slower than Norris after their first laps in Q3, a gap exaggerated by a key error at the first turn and then less effective approaches to turn 3 and 4, the latter being the source of the majority of the Briton’s internal advantage all weekend.
He clearly had scope to improve on his deficit, but even had he simply improved at the same rate as Norris with his final lap, he would have comfortably achieved a front-row start, albeit with his teammate still claiming the biggest pole margin of the year.
“I think through all of qualifying I was missing that last 0.1 seconds, but not getting the chance to do my final Q3 run was quite frustrating,” he said. “Sometimes those things are going to happen.
“I was quite happy that I didn’t lose more spots by not doing that.
“Third’s still an okay place to start around here. You can race around this track, so I’ll try and make some progress.”
Piastri will have his sights on finishing at least runner-up to Norris. McLaren clearly has the fastest car — Piastri praised the team’s upgrade package that “doesn’t feel that different in the car, but on the timing sheets it looks good” — and with a two-stop race expected, there’s a chance for him to make up at least one place.
But he’ll need to make up ground quickly if he’s to prevent Norris from running away to an early and potentially decisive lead.
“I’m not planning on finishing third, that’s for sure,” he said.
FERRARI BOUNCE IS REAL… SORT OF
Ferrari offered mixed reviews of its new floor on Friday night. While Charles Leclerc proffered that it was delivering the expected downforce numbers, over one lap he was nowhere near the fight for pole position, even if his race pace looked strong.
Improving single-lap speed was a key challenge for the Italian team ahead of qualifying, and it delivered, with Leclerc set to start from the front row for just the second time this season, while Lewis Hamilton will line up fourth after lapping just 0.09 seconds slower — and the Briton was only 0.028 seconds shy of pinching third from Piastri.
“It’s a fantastic result,” a rare jubilant Hamilton enthused, per ESPN.
“Considering yesterday we were a lot further off, for us to be a lot closer and on the second row, I think that’s fantastic, and for Charles being on the front row.
“Ultimately my last lap wasn’t perfect, and if I’d finished it, I’d have been second, so there are lots of positives.
“It’s also been the best day operationally, particularly through qualifying, just timings, the information we’re getting in terms of traffic and positions on track. It was the best, and proper world class, and that’s what we’re working towards.”
Leclerc credited the team’s upgrades for making the difference “because the gaps are very tight around here”.
“It definitely helped us,” he said. “I felt like there were some steps forward. How much, we need to see it in different characteristics of tracks.
“However, the numbers that we expected, we had them, which is a good start. That means that we are working in the right direction.”
It’s important to put Leclerc’s comments into context.
While Ferrari has done enough to put Leclerc on the front row, its deficit to McLaren is the largest gap between the top two teams in qualifying all year.
You also have to consider that Verstappen had been an almost exact match for Leclerc with his second lap before encountering Gasly’s yellow flags.
So this isn’t quite the breakthrough that qualifying positions might suggest. However, it is an improvement.
And if Ferrari has managed to retain its race pace from Friday, Leclerc and Hamilton could be in a position to apply real pressure to both McLaren drivers with a view to pinching its first victory of the season — or, in Hamilton’s case, his first podium in red.
ANOTHER UNCOMFORTABLE DAY FOR RED BULL’S DRIVER LINE-UP
Verstappen was a missing component from the fight for the front row after being tripped up by yellow flags, but the car’s performance throughout the session was underwhelming anyway compared to his competitive showing in final practice.
It left the Dutchman — a five-time winner in Austria — seventh on the grid.
“Everything just fell apart a bit,” he said of his qualifying hour. “Every corner was a bit of a struggle, to be honest. No balance — no front, no rear — in different places of the corner, so that made it very difficult to get a rhythm and a bit of a benchmark.
“It was quite a painful qualifying for us.”
Conditions were changeable during qualifying, with the wind moving direction and the air and track surface warming up in the late afternoon.
“It seems like as soon as it got warmer, it made our struggles even worse,” he said. “That doesn’t look great [for the race], but we’ll see tomorrow — maybe some surprises in the race.”
But things were worse for Red Bull Racing than just Verstappen’s underwhelming outing.
Yuki Tsunoda was knocked out in Q1 for the second time in the last three grands prix and will start 18th after complaining of many of the same grip problems as his teammate. Ironically, though, his 0.263-second margin to Verstappen in Q1 is his smallest deficit to the Dutchman to date.
In an uncomfortable twist, he was beaten — as was Verstappen — by the man he replaced in the senior team, with Liam Lawson qualifying sixth as the best Red Bull-backed driver of the day.
The Kiwi’s recovery from his early axing from the senior team is continuing apace, him outqualifying teammate Isack Hadjar for just the second time all year for his first Q3 appearance since Monaco and his best starting position since last year’s São Paulo Grand Prix.
“In the last couple of races everything’s felt really good, honestly,” he said. “I’ve felt really good.
“We’ve done a lot of work on the car, and on my side as well, just to make it more comfortable for me.
“It’s been there, it just hasn’t shown, so it’s nice to show it today. But obviously tomorrow is also the important day.”
WILLIAMS FUMBLING AS SAUBER SURGES
After a blockbuster start to the season that saw its cars genuinely racing Ferrari on merit, Williams has cooled its giant-slaying performances and slumped down the midfield.
Williams was the second-slowest car in qualifying, and at 1.172 seconds off the eventual pole time, this was the team’s worst Saturday result of the season by a considerable margin.
The team had explanations. Both drivers picked up floor damage in Q1 that had to be hastily repaired. Alex Albon was able to scrape into Q2 for an eventual 12th place, but Carlos Sainz was also held back by brake problems that locked him into 19th for his third consecutive Q1 knockout.
Given Q3 should have been possible with this car, it’s a major missed opportunity that will likely leave Albon scrapping for minor points at best, while Sainz will need favourable circumstance to score.
But the underperformance is also part of a trend that’s seen the team’s previously comfortable fifth place in the constructors championship suddenly look vulnerable.
Williams has scored just four points from the last three rounds. It’s been outscored by four of the five teams behind it on the title table, with last-placed Alpine equalling its haul.
Racing Bulls, its closest rival, is applying the most pressure. It’s up to sixth on the table after having scored 18 points in the last three weekends.
But Sauber is now emerging as a genuine change to threaten.
The team’s upgrade package in Spain saw Nico Hülkenberg take home a massive 10 points with a sensational fifth-place finish. He followed up with another four points in Canada.
Now rookie Gabriel Bortoleto has underlined the car’s new potential. Previously the slowest machine on the grid by some margin, it’s now powered him to the first Q3 appearance of his career.
The Sauber car was a season-best sixth fastest overall and was almost 0.3 seconds quicker than the Williams.
This will be a fascinating battle to watch. Williams has been open about leaving this year’s car undeveloped to focus exclusively on 2026. Sauber, however, has been upgrading its 2025 machine, with team boss Mattia Binotto feeling it couldn’t start its Audi era next year after another dismal season.
For Williams to hold fifth, it must execute cleanly. Recently it hasn’t been.
Now it’s vulnerable.