Valtteri Bottas made the most of a rare mistake by Lewis Hamilton to take his first pole of the 2018 Formula 1 season at the Austrian Grand Prix on Saturday.
The world champion was on the back foot after running wide at Turn 3 on his first attempt in the decisive Q3 session with Bottas producing an excellent lap to take top spot provisionally.
Then, as Hamilton got it together on his second lap, the Finn would find just enough to secure pole just 0.019s with a track record time of 1m03.130s.
Both Ferrari’s would actually be faster than the Mercedes through the first two sectors but would fall back dramatically in the final two corners with Sebastian Vettel in third and Kimi Raikkonen fourth.
Later though, Vettel would be hit with a three-place grid penalty for impeding Carlos Sainz in Q2 dropping the German driver to sixth.
That promotes Max Verstappen to fourth on a difficult day for Red Bull at their home track for several reasons.
First their lack of pace, with the Dutchman over seven-tenths off the pole which is one of the bigger margins all year on the shortest circuit all year in terms of time. Secondly, an internal spat over the radio in Q3, with Daniel Ricciardo questioning why he was running and effectively offering a slipstream to his teammate.
Their problems would allow Romain Grosjean to jump up into what will become fifth on the grid for Haas, with the Australian behind Vettel in seventh.
The American team comfortably took the position of midfield leaders, with Kevin Magnussen less than a tenth slower than Ricciardo in eighth and six-tenths ahead of the leading Renault of Carlos Sainz in ninth.
His teammate Nico Hulkenberg would complete the top 10 for the French manufacturer.
As five teams filled one half of the grid, the remaining five filled the other each squad having one driver from P11 to P15.
Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly optimised the performance of the Force India and Toro Rosso respectively in 11th and 12th, both also holding big advantages over their teammates who failed to make it out of Q1.
Charles Leclerc couldn’t repeat his incredible top 10 performance from Paul Ricard in 13th and worse for the Monegasque driver he will take a five-place grid drop for a new gearbox following a problem in final practice.
Fernando Alonso claimed he tried to take final two corners flat-out in his McLaren and actually ruined what could have been a good enough lap to make Q3, instead, the Spaniard was only 14th.
At the end of a very tight Q1 session, with less than a tenth covering P15-P19, it would be an excellent lap from Lance Stroll that saw him make it through by just 0.007s for Williams.
A mistake from Leclerc at Turn 4 also brought out yellow flags which prevented Stoffel Vandoorne, Sergio Perez, Sergey Sirotkin and Brendon Hartley from attempting a final flying lap. They would finish the session in that order.
Finally, Marcus Ericsson brought up the field in the second Sauber.
The full results from qualifying can be seen below:
Note: Vettel drops from P3 to P6 and Leclerc also falls from P13 to P18.