One car on the second row and one on the third, along with six points in the Constructors' classification: that's the outcome of Saturday at the Austrian Grand Prix for Scuderia Ferrari HP.

Compared with yesterday's Sprint Qualifying, today's qualifying showed some small signs of progress in terms of one lap pace on Soft tyres, even though that was not enough to fight for a front row start. Carlos Sainz will start from fourth place tomorrow, with Charles Leclerc right behind him on the grid in sixth, because while giving it his all in Q3, he made a mistake that meant he could not improve on his first run time.

Carlos and Charles got through the first two phases comfortably enough, although the Monegasque had to be out on track towards the end of Q1 and Q2 to be ready to react in case others improved. In the final part, Sainz therefore had two sets of new Softs available, while Leclerc had one set that had done one lap and one fresh set. Carlos did a 1'05"235 on his first run, Charles a 1'05"044, which temporarily placed them fourth and seventh. On his second run, Carlos improved to a good 1'04"851 just 11 thousandths slower than George Russell's third fastest lap. Leclerc locked up at turn 4 and his lap was compromised, so that he had to settle for the time on his first run, which will see him start from sixth on the grid, after Oscar Piastri had his time cancelled for exceeding track limits.

Shortly after midday, the team picked up six points for the Constructors' championship, at the end of the third Sprint race of the year, in which Carlos and Charles started fifth and tenth. They both got great starts, with Sainz up to fourth at the end of the opening lap, having passed Russell. Leclerc got ahead of both Alpines and Sergio Perez to be seventh. Carlos lost a place to the Mercedes on lap 8, which meant he was back in fifth, while Charles held the same position to the chequered flag.

The 71 lap Austrian Grand Prix gets underway at 15.00, in similar weather to the past two days. The aim is to try and finish on the podium and bring home as many points as possible. In terms of strategy, much will depend on how the field settles after the start, because as could be seen in the Sprint, whether or not a driver finds himself in a DRS train and his position within it can make all the difference in terms of tyre management and how the car as a whole performs.

Carlos Sainz: It was a more positive day than yesterday: we have gained more speed and made some changes that have definitely helped us overall. We are still struggling in fast corners but we are working very hard with the team to understand how to address it. We are where I imagined we could be, but I feel that we are improving and we were very close to P3. The goal for tomorrow is clearly the podium: we know it will be difficult, but we will give it our all, as we always do.

Charles Leclerc: Today did not go particularly well. Our performance in the Sprint race this morning wasn't great, after which we worked on changing the car set-up looking for those few precious tenths we were lacking both for qualifying and for the race tomorrow. I think that work paid off and we can move up the order tomorrow.

In Q3, after an encouraging first run on used tyres, I had a good feeling and tried to push as hard as possible. Unfortunately I made a few mistakes in turns 4 and 6 and so I have to start from sixth. But there were some good points today and I believe we can aim for the podium. It seems we are working in the right direction and I hope we can do something good in the race.

Fred Vasseur, Team Principal: Overall, we have made a small step forward compared to yesterday, but in the end we were hoping to be a bit further forward on the grid. We improved in the last sector but we are still suffering a bit in a couple of corners.

Carlos drove a solid qualifying and was just a hundredth of a second slower than (George) Russell while Charles was on a good lap, much faster than his previous one, before locking up at turn 4. It was a shame he had to do his first Q3 run on a scrubbed set rather than the on a new one.

As for the race, we saw today that DRS trains develop and if you are in the right position in it, then you can gain quite a bit. The counter effect of this is that if you are at the back of that train it's easy to overheat the tyres and the car in general. So a lot will depend on the start and on lap 1, but compared to the Sprint, strategy and pit stops are involved and everyone will play a bit with these factors.

Check out our Saturday gallery from the Red Bull Ring here.