2023 Austrian GP Qualifying Update & Tips – JP
2023 Austrian GP Qualifying Update
2023 Austrian GP qualifying starts soon and James Punt has an update. His outright preview can be read here, get his tips for qualifying below.
2023 Austrian GP Qualifying
This afternoon’s one hour free practice session didn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know. The raw times are a bit misleading as a number of drivers didn’t run the soft tyre.
Max Verstappen was one of those drivers, yet he still topped the time sheet by 0.241 seconds, which is a comfortable lead on what is a very short lap. On the soft tyre we should expect him to knock a few tenths off that lead.
The two Ferrari’s were 2nd and 3rd on the soft trye. 4th placed Lewis Hamilton was 0.250 behind Sainz in third with the medium shod Perez in 5th place.
Lance Stroll was the lead Aston Martin in 6th but he was on the soft tyre while his teammate Alonso was 8th on the medium. Alonso was over 0.90 off Verstappen’s time on the same tyre.
Max In Prime Position
Unless Red Bull were on fumes and the rest running heavy, we have our GP pole position driver in the shape of Verstappen. Sergio Perez was not well yesterday but took his place today and will be in the car this weekend. His qualifying performances have been poor for the last few races and he needs to nail a good one today.
He may be helped by the Red Bull being understeering this afternoon. No doubt the team will dial that out if not by the qualifying session, certainly by tomorrow, but Perez is much happier with a bit of understeer.
Ferrari were expected to go well here and it will be Perez’ job to try and get ahead of them and it should be close.
Floor Damage
McLaren and Alpine did not use the soft tyre and Norris only used one set of mediums, which explains why he was in last place. He missed the last ten minutes or so with some floor damage, but nothing serious. It is hard to keep the car off the big saw tooth kerbs here, especially when pushing and he will not be the only driver to have floor trouble.
Max is the 1.26 favourite to be fastest qualifier and he is very hard to oppose. What about the ‘without Verstappen’ markets I hear you cry? Well cry me a river because the bookies don’t give a flying you know what.
Match Bet
Alonso is 5-3 vs. Hamilton in 2023 and more importantly 3-1 in the last four. Obviously, Mercedes’ form has picked up since they introduced their upgrade in Monaco and Alonso is 2-1 for the last three.
He lost in the wet in Barcelona, otherwise a 3-0 was likely. Alonso’s last four qualifying sessions have yielded form figures of 2/2/9/3 compared to 13/6/5/4 for Hamilton.
Stroll on the softs was just 0.01 off Hamilton earlier and Alonso is considerably quicker than the Canadian.
