08/07/2017
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo: "It's a bit tricky out there. This year the track has a lot of grip on it and that kind of makes it harder. You feel you can push more but it's easy to go over the limit because we carry so much corner speed. We all obviously love going fast and want more and more, so we end up getting greedy and then mistakes happen, but that makes it exciting. Of course it would have been nice to finish that last lap but in the end I'm happy with the top five and we'll move up to fourth because of Lewis' penalty. All in all it was a pretty good session and I'm relatively happy. I believe there is a bit of rain coming tomorrow at noon so it should be interesting and not that straight forward. Lewis will try to come up the ranks as well so it will be exciting."
Max Verstappen: "You can never predict qualifying but it was reasonable today. I hoped for a little better balance in the car but overall it was not too bad. I tried a lot of different lines at turn three and all the time I was losing the rear of the car. On my final run I was gaining time but I didn't get DRS down the straight as Grosjean was stopped on track. You lose easily two and a half tenths on that straight if you don't have DRS. I tried to get a little more out of the next corners but I picked up the throttle maybe a little too early at turn seven and lost the rear. Tomorrow I don't think we are quite there in terms of speed to fight with Mercedes and Ferrari, but as we have seen a lot can happen in the race so anything is possible. If there is a bit of a mix of conditions that could be good for us and with a good strategy you never know. There is a lot of orange everywhere in the grandstands which is really nice to see, so we will try and put on a good show for everyone."
Christian Horner, Team Principal: "It was a slightly anti-climactic end to an exciting qualifying here at the Red Bull Ring. In the end, unfortunately the yellow flags, initially for Grosjean, and thus DRS switching off, prevented everybody from the opportunity to improve on their times. Particularly Max, in trying to make that time up he obviously got a bit too deep into turn 7 and that was the end of qualifying. Daniel did a good job with the first run to qualify fifth, and fifth and sixth, which become fourth and fifth on the grid due to Lewis' penalty, sets us up for an exciting race with potentially a bit of weather around tomorrow. Looking at the grid we hope to have a part to play in the result in front of our home crowd in Austria."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Spielberg, here.