Austrian GP Qualifying: Max Verstappen Denies Pole Position to Lando Norris, Talks About Father’s Feud With Christian Horner & Charles Leclerc Continues to Struggle

Max Verstappen absolutely loves it around his team’s home circuit in Austria. Today, the Dutchman was almost five-tenths clear of Lando Norris in the second. For context, the rest of the grid is separated by the same amount of time. Talk about a stellar performance. The Austrian Race Weekend has given us so much to talk about and it is just Saturday.

The most important events of the day are as follows: Max Verstappen won the Sprint race and extended his dominance to race qualifying. His father, Jos Verstappen, continued to air the dirty laundry of his feud with Christian Horner, and the former winner around the circuit, Charles Leclerc, had a weekend he’d want to forget.

Max Verstappen demolishes the rest of the F1 grid

“We are going to need something extra to beat the pace of Max and Red Bull, but I’m going to try my best,” said Lando Norris, explaining why he has been constantly falling short of Verstappen’s might and what he can do to overcome it.

Formula One F1 – Miami Grand Prix – Miami International Autodrome, Miami, Florida, United States – May 5, 2024 McLaren’s Lando Norris celebrates winning the Miami Grand Prix alongside second placed Red Bull’s Max Verstappen REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Though Lando has stolen a win and 2 pole positions from Max, McLaren’s mammoth upgrades have only been good enough for the silver medal. Despite the competition and teams bunching closer together in terms of performance, Red Bull and their golden boy are untouchable.

While it was a perfect day on track for him, the off-track drama between his dad and his boss continues to get ugly.

“This scenario could have been avoided,” Max Verstappen ponders upon his father’s feud with Christian Horner

After the Bahrain Grand Prix earlier this year, Max Verstappen‘s father, Jos, famously warned that Red Bull risked falling apart if Horner stayed on board. This was due to the Christian Horner controversy that shook the paddock. Jos and Christian were even seen in an ugly verbal spat that went viral at the time.

Since then, it has been pretty obvious that things haven’t been civil. The brewing tensions exploded when Jos stated he was “done” with Horner, who he described as “childish” for sabotaging his plans to drive in this weekend’s Legends Parade.

Talking about the public fiasco, Max said, “Of course, you don’t want these things to happen. My dad has been quite clear about the reason behind it and, of course, I can understand his opinion on it. Because at the end of the day, he gets asked to drive the car and finds out he is not wanted to drive the car. My dad doesn’t actually care about driving the car, but he got asked ‘Please, do it for the Dutch fans?’ Red Bull, we have a great relationship with home track. So I understand. On the other hand, I’m here to focus on the performance side of things, so I want a good relationship with everyone. But of course, this scenario could have been avoided.”

Do you know what else could have been avoided? Charles Leclerc and Ferrari’s disaster class.

“I broke everything,” Charles Leclerc repents forgettable Austrian GP Qualifying

The last two race weekends have been forgettable ones for Ferrari. A combination of their errors, unfortunate occurrences, and just other teams outperforming them have been disastrous for the Maranello-based team. While yesterday it was an anti-stall combined with engine stoppage for Leclerc, today he blamed his shortcomings for a slow qualifying.

Talking on the radio, he said, “I tried too much. I am sorry. It should have been a P3 or so. Ah yeah, I think it was turn 4, then after that, you were trying to recover, so no issues. I think I broke everything under the car…”

Keeping all this in mind, what are your predictions for tomorrow?