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Esteban Ocon was satisfied with his sixth-place finish in the Sprint race at the Red Bull Ring, although he admits he was lucky after he was forced to stop his car on the way back to the pits after the chequered flag.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team driver withstood the pressure of Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen across the opening few laps, but once he was clear of the Dane, he was able to run in his own pace. 

He did lose a position to Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Pérez, who was charging through the field after his post-Qualifying penalty, but he was pleased with sixth.

“I am definitely very satisfied with sixth place in today’s Sprint,” said Ocon.  “We had a decent start and managed to stay ahead of Kevin [Magnussen] in the first couple of laps, before building a healthy advantage over both Haas’.

“The Mercedes of George [Russell] was too quick for us and so, in the end, I feel we maximised today, securing a good starting position on the grid for tomorrow’s Grand Prix and also picking up some points along the way.”

George Russell was thankful to his mechanics after they repaired his car prior to Saturday’s running at the Red Bull Ring, with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver ending the Sprint race in Austria in fourth place.

Russell crashed into the barriers at the final turn during Friday’s Qualifying session to leave the team a lot of work to do overnight, but he was out on track in final practice on Saturday morning before the Sprint race got underway in the afternoon.

The disappointment for Russell was the pace deficit to the cars in front, with Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen more than thirteen seconds ahead after twenty-three laps, and the team will need to work hard overnight to find the reasons why they were so off the pace.

“First, thank you to everyone in the garage to get the car ready today,” said Russell.  “It was a huge team effort, so it was good to get points on the board.

“As for the performance, the gap was more than we were expecting. We were 13 seconds behind after 23 laps, so that’s nearly half a second per lap. We need to work overnight to understand why we dropped off the pace.

Max Verstappen’s recent domination at the Red Bull Ring continued on Saturday as the Dutchman led from lights out to chequered flag to win the Sprint race.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver, who won both races in Austria twelve months ago, held off the early challenge from Scuderia Ferrari to take the victory and the eight points on offer for the win.

Verstappen feels it will be close again between Red Bull and Ferrari during Sunday’s main race in Austria, but he will be looking to extend his incredible run at the circuit and his lead in the Drivers’ Championship.

“It feels good to bring home the Sprint win at here at The Red Bull Ring,” said Verstappen.  “The first two laps were important for me to pull a gap, from there it was all about maintaining the pace.

“The Sprint race of course does not give you the full picture heading into the race tomorrow, but pace wise, it’s close between us and Ferrari. I still expect it to be a tough battle tomorrow, we’ll also have the hard tyres so it will be interesting to see how they perform during the race.

Saturday was a good day in the office for Oracle Red Bull Racing, where reigning champion, Max Verstappen, took victory in the second sprint race of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

Sergio Pérez also had a great performance, ending the day in fifth place following his penalty to thirteenth after the FIA found him guilty of exceeding track limits in Qualifying Two on Friday. The Mexican charged his way through the field in what was a pleasure to watch.

For Verstappen, things were a little more simple. In front of his ‘Orange Army’ fans, the Dutchman was able to pull away following an early-race squabble between the two Scuderia Ferrari cars. Verstappen was able to remain consistent and take victory by over a second and a half, giving him eight additional points to extend his lead in the drivers championship.

Charles Leclerc was able to fend off his now-race-winner team-mate, Carlos Sainz to take second place on the grid for Sunday’s race. The Spaniard looked strong at the start of the sprint, making overtake attempts on the number sixteen driver at Turn Three and Turn Four. Ultimately, Sainz remained in position to take the third spot on the grid for the Austrian Grand Prix.

What about the rest?

George Russell has redeemed himself after crashing out of Qualifying Three on Friday, where he had, luckily, already set a lap time good enough for fourth place. The Briton was able to pull away from the cars behind and maintain his fourth place position, putting him alongside Sainz on row two of the grid for the main event.

Repeating the performance from the FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, Romain Dumas put the sole #708 Glickenhaus Racing on pole position for the fourth round of the championship.

The driver of the 007 LMH machine set the fastest lap of the session, 1:35.416, at the end of a run of consecutive fastest laps giving the Privateer team just under a second advantage on the second-placed and 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing. Brendon Hartley had been trailing much further than nine tenths behind Dumas, but a late improvement to a 1:36.335 closed up the gap before the premature end to the session.

Mikkel Jensen was the cause of the early end, bringing out the red flags as the #93 Peugeot Sport came to a halt on track in the Lesmo complex. The Dane had already had some issues during his first lap, going off at the first chicane. The #93 will start behind the LMP2 grid for tomorrow’s race, having failed to set a lap time.

Three different cars filled the top three as Nicolas Lapierre beat out the second Toyota for third on the grid. Kamui Kobayashi would have been third if not for a deletion of his four-tenths-faster lap time due to a track limits violation. Gustavo Menezes put the #94 Peugeot fifth in class, just three tenths off Kobayashi’s 1:36.919 in the French manufacturer’s first WEC qualifying since its return to the pinnacle of endurance racing.

Taking advantage of the red flag, Filipe Albuquerque stole LMP2 pole for #22 United Autosport from Mathias Beche in the #44 ARC Bratislava. Beche had been on par to take the second LMP2 pole for a Pro-Am line up of the season before Alburquerque’s late improvement beat him to the top spot by three tenths of a second.

Carlos Sainz topped the second practice session at the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria. Charlse Leclerc finished in second position, just 0.05 seconds slower than his team-mate.

Max Verstappen finished in third position and will start the sprint race in the afternoon in pole position.

The second sprint race of the season will decide the starting grid for the race on Sunday. The race on Saturday afternoon has also acquired more importance this season because the winner gets eight points and slides down to the eighth-placed finisher getting one point.

Sergio Pérez has been penalized after qualification for exceeding track limits and has been dropped to thirteenth place on the grid for the sprint race.

The second free practice session at the Red Bull Ring started with air temperatures at 20 degrees C and track temperatures at 33 degrees C.

Red Bull junior driver Jak Crawford took his first win in the FIA Formula 3 Championship at the Red Bull Ring on Saturday morning.

He started third on the partially-reversed grid, between Caio Collet and Juan Manuel Correa ahead, and Franco Colapinto and Zane Maloney behind.

Everyone made it through Turns 1 and 2 cleanly, but Rafael Villagomez bounced between two others on the entry to Turn 3 and was out on the spot.

The safety car came out just after Correa got around the outside of Collet at Turn 4.

Oliver Bearman and Pepe Marti managed to gain two places before the field was neutralised, with the safety car coming in at the end of Lap 3.

Isack Hadjar won the Sprint Race at Silverstone less than a week ago, and continued his form into the FIA Formula 3 Championship‘s visit to the Red Bull Ring by putting his Red Bull Racing-liveried Hitech GP car onto pole position for the Feature Race.

He will lead Championship leader Victor Martins away from the line on Sunday morning, ahead of Oliver Bearman who led the Prema Racing trio in what’s becoming a stellar rookie season.

Kaylen Frederick picked up his best FIA F3 finish at Silverstone, and sat just behind the fastest man in Free Practice, Arthur Leclerc to end the session fifth.

The track had fully dried out as Qualifying got underway, but the 30-car field struggled to find optimum track position around one of the shortest circuits on the calendar.

Martins set the early benchmark with a 1:19:980, a couple of tenths on Leclerc’s fastest time from Practice.

Besides some soreness, Carlos Sainz did not suffer any injuries in his wild roll in Thursday’s Island X Prix #1 Final. As such, he has been medically cleared to compete in the second round of Extreme E‘s Sardinia doubleheader this weekend, though his ACCIONA | Sainz XE Team will have to use the series’ test car rather than the main vehicle due to substantial damage.

Sainz’s Island X Prix #1 ended just moments after it began when he was clipped by Rosberg X Racing‘s Johan Kristoffersson as they merged from the multi-lane start, causing his #55 car to flip before landing on its roof. He was extricated from the overturned vehicle and was reportedly in good spirits but was transported to Cagliari’s Misericordia Hospital for additional medical evaluations before being released. The wreck resulted in a red flag to ensure proper and safe extraction, and RXR would win the race before receiving a thirty-second time penalty for the contact that demoted it to third. Sainz and his team expressed dismay with what they felt was an exceptionally tame punishment for RXR, with Sainz describing it as “one of the most serious actions that I have ever seen without an exemplary penalty.”

The FIA gave ACCIONA | Sainz permission to continue paddock operations beyond curfew to make repairs ahead of the weekend’s second race, with a deadline set of 8 AM on Friday. However, the damage proved to be too much to resolve in such a short period, prompting the team to roll out the test vehicle. Race stewards also allowed Sainz to conduct Friday track reconnaissance with a team member driving him in a UTV rather than on foot, though he got out and walked around for closer examinations. Another curfew break was granted on Friday through 7 AM the next day to “catch up working time”.

“I’m happy to be here even though I’m not 100 percent well yet,” said Sainz in a video released by the team. “We will try to race tomorrow and try to move on. The result was a shame. We could have achieved important things. We were leading at that moment and with a good feeling. Now, time to keep going.”

Team-mate Laia Sanz described the repair process as “quite a mess” though “the mechanics are working hard. We will race with the test car of the orgnisation (Extreme E) as there is no time to get ours ready.”

Arthur Leclerc is on a mission to close the gap to FIA Formula 3 Championship leader Victor Martins, and showed his intent at the earliest opportunity by going quickest in mixed conditions at the Red Bull Ring on Friday.

Having won the Feature Race at Silverstone and closed the gap to six points, he arrived in Austria in a strong position but had an ever-changing track surface to contend with in the Styrian mountains.

The heavens had opened early in the morning, but the track only got drier as the 45-minute session progressed.

Roman Stanek went quickest early on, before the returning Alexander Smolyar had a turn at the top, stepping back into the seat after Filip Ugran took the Russian’s place at Silverstone.

Leclerc and his Prema Racing team-mate Oliver Bearman pushed on once the field bolted slicks on, with Silverstone polesitter Zak O’Sullivan also showing strongly as the 30-car field dropped into the 1:29s.

It was a mixed Qualifying for Oracle Red Bull Racing at their home race, with Max Verstappen taking pole at the Austrian Grand Prix but with Sergio Pérez starting from thirteenth place.

The defending World Champion stormed his way to yet another pole position, after fending off pressure from both Scuderia Ferrari drivers. Verstappen in the closing minutes of Qualifying Three was bumped down to third, and looked set to start there after a poor start to his final lap.

However, the Dutchman made up incredible ground in the final sector, to take pole position from Charles Leclerc by +0.019s. It means Verstappen will be starting from the front for Saturday’s Sprint race, where the result from that will determine the line-up for Sunday’s traditional race.

Verstappen was delighted to take pole at the team’s home race, where he knew he had to be right on it in the final sector.

“We can definitely be happy with the result today. On the final lap in Q3, turn one and three weren’t the best so I knew the rest of the lap needed to be spot on. I was down on the first and second sector so pushed hard in the final and it paid off. It was a good session and of course it’s good to be close to the Ferraris again. This season so far, the car has been good in the race compared to qualifying where we’ve been weaker, so hopefully tomorrow we can be competitive in the sprint.”

Williams Racing’s Alex Albon put in a strong Qualifying performance at the Austrian Grand Prix, to line-up in twelfth place for Saturday’s Sprint race. Albon’s team-mate Nicholas Latifi will start nineteenth at the Red Bull Ring.

It was a great session by the Thai driver, who came within a tenth of making it to the top-ten shootout. Albon finally got to put the new upgrades to good use, after last weekend’s wet qualifying failed to work in the upgraded car’s favour.

The Williams driver was “very happy” with his qualifying performance, but is slightly frustrated to have just missed out on the top ten.

“I’m very happy. Firstly, the team did a great job to get everything ready after the damage from Silverstone; they worked flat out at the factory and here at the circuit, so to repay them with a P12 is great. We have obviously brought an upgrade and it’s nice to see the performance increase because of it and I hope we can progress forward each weekend.

“We were only a tenth away from Q3 – it’s almost frustrating as you can always think of places you could have improved – but I’m very happy. I think it’s all to play for tomorrow.”

It was a disappointing Qualifying for Scuderia AlphaTauri at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Pierre Gasly to start Saturday’s Sprint race from eleventh and Yuki Tsunoda in fourteenth, at the Red Bull Ring.

Gasly was once again top dog at AlphaTauri; however, never truly looked like threatening a place in Qualifying Three. Having ended Free Practice One in tenth, it was already predicted that the Frenchman would come close to the final part of qualifying, but unfortunately missed out by just nine thousandths of a second.

Despite just missing out, Gasly is nevertheless upbeat about his chances in both the sprint and the main race. The French driver is also full of confidence that a top ten place will come easier when the next set of upgrades are fitted to the AT03.

“I’m pretty happy with today, we haven’t had any upgrades for a few races, so we know compared to other cars we’ve been struggling quite a bit more lately. It’s always frustrating to miss out on Q3 by such a small margin, but I must say I was pleased with my lap, it was pretty tidy and I was able to put it altogether for Quali today.

“We’re starting just out of the top 10 for the Sprint tomorrow, so we’re in a good position to make our way forward and hopefully move into the points on Sunday. We need to work more, as we can’t be satisfied with the overall performance, but we know we have some upgrades coming, so if we are able to improve from this current baseline then we should be quite competitive in the upcoming races.”

Charles Leclerc admitted he struggled to get his Pirelli tyres back in the right operating window in the final attack in Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring on Friday, and he believes this cost him the chance of pole position.

The Scuderia Ferrari driver missed out on top spot by the narrowest of margins to Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, and he bemoans the fact understeer hampered him when it mattered due to the tyres not being where he wanted them to be.

Leclerc hopes to get back to the front in Saturday’s Sprint race in Austria, with the Monegasque racer looking to return to winning ways for the first time since the Australian Grand Prix.

“It was very close, but Max was just in front today,” said Leclerc.  “I had some understeer after the red flags as I struggled to get the tyres back in the right window, so I didn’t have a perfect lap.

“It’s a shame, but it’s only Friday and it’s Sunday that really counts. Tomorrow it will be important to work on driving style in FP2 and then have a very good Sprint.”

The Haas F1 Team enjoyed their Friday at the Red Bull Ring, with both Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher making it into Q3 during Qualifying.

Just a week on from their first two-car top ten finish in three years in the British Grand Prix, both Magnussen and Schumacher were quick from the get-go in Austria, with the two set to share row four of the grid for Saturday’s Sprint race.

Magnussen was pleased to have such a strong car right from the start of the weekend, even though he felt there was still some time left on the table when it mattered in Q3.

“It’s been a good Friday,” said Magnussen.  “We got the car on track for the first run in FP1 and it looked competitive.

“I was pretty confident going into qualifying and it’s been a strong day. I don’t even feel like we got the most out of it, it felt like there was a little more lap time in it.