A long weekend awaits for Mercedes after suffering a disastrous afternoon at Spielberg. Hamilton crashed in Q3 with a big impact and Russell did the same shortly after. Fortunately, neither of them were injured after uncharacteristic mistakes. Hamilton finished 10th and Russell fifth. A setback for the team who were hoping to build on the improvement they showed at the British GP. Hamilton was frustrated and unable to explain how he lost the car. “I’m incredibly disappointed in myself in the end,” he said. “I feel really sorry for the team, everyone has worked so hard to build this car and I never like to damage it or bring it back damaged. We were fighting for a top three I think and I don’t have an answer. I just lost the rear in turn 7 and that was it.” With the weekend hosting the sprint race on Saturday, which will determine the grid for Sunday’s GP, they have a chance to come back and make up places as their car looked competitive, but a long night beckons for the Mercedes engineers. Verstappen, in excellent form at his team’s home grand prix, produced a superb final run that ensures he will start at the front of the grid for the sprint race. The Red Bull driver beat the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz into second and third. In an extremely competitive session the top three were separated by eight hundredths of a second. Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez was fourth but is under investigation for exceeding track limits during his hot lap in Q2 and could lose places. Verstappen set the pace in his first hot run in Q3 with a time of 1 minute 5.092 seconds. However, Hamilton had a shock behind him. Entering turn seven he lost the rear, tried to correct but couldn’t hold it. He left and had a side impact collision that may have damaged his transmission and needed replacement. Subscribe to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks. Some of the hard-partying Dutch bodies in the crowd cheered his misfortune and when the session resumed Russell immediately followed Hamilton into the barriers. He went into turn 10 hot, spun and slid backwards. And he dismissed what he saw as a driver error in pushing too hard. “I wouldn’t say [it was] a lucky escape. There is nothing lucky or fortunate about making a mistake like that,” he said. “I could have been fourth. I was a tenth over my lap and I did it. I could be third but we have to see how much damage has been done, so sorry to the team and the garage.” Red-flagged again, the closing stages were tight for a lap and Leclerc had the advantage only for Verstappen to pull off a strong final field, particularly in the final two corners, to set a time of 1min 4.984, two centimeters on top of Ferrari. Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher were seventh and eighth for Haas. Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso in sixth and ninth for Alpine. Valtteri Bottas was placed 13th where he will start the sprint race. However, after getting a new powerunit, the resulting penalties mean he will start Sunday’s GP from the back of the grid. Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda were 11th and 14th for AlphaTauri. Alex Albon was 12th for Williams and Lando Norris 15th for McLaren. Daniel Ricciardo was 16th for McLaren. Guanyu Zhou was 18th for Alfa Romeo, his first time in a season since his massive crash at Silverstone last week. Nicolas Latifi was 19th for Williams. Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll in 17th and 20th for Aston Martin.
