2017 Formula One Austrian Grand Prix

[Paul Jeffrey]

A round-up of all the action from qualifying at the Formula 1 Grosser Preis von Osterreich 2017 in Spielberg...


Valtteri Bottas - 1st, 1:04.251

“What a special feeling. It's only the second pole for me and hopefully there's more to come. It was a good lap in Q3, if not quite perfect. Today was all about building up the confidence in the car. I got it set up nicely and it's great to get the second pole position of my career. I'm going to focus on my own race, rather than looking behind me tomorrow, but we will not underestimate the Ferraris. It's going to be close and should be an interesting fight. Hopefully Lewis can fight back and we can score strong points for the team. The weather could be important tomorrow but starting first, I won't complain if the rain stays away. The car feels great, especially on high fuel, and I'm ready to win. That's the only target. It's been too long since Russia.”

Lewis Hamilton - 3rd, 1:04.424

“It's been a frustrating day for me. I had a chance to be fastest today and I didn't quite put it all together on that final lap in Q3. I'm disappointed with my performance in Q3: it would have been great to do a better lap but it obviously wasn't meant to be. Valtteri did a fantastic job though to take pole. The gearbox issue hasn't played on my mind during the weekend but after qualifying you realise you're starting further back. I think it will be tough to make progress tomorrow. The pack is a lot closer than in 2014 when I fought up to P2. But perhaps the weather can come into play. I'll work as hard as I can to recover and try get as many points as possible. We still have great pace and the car has been fantastic here, so I know I've got the car to do the job. Let's see how it all plays out tomorrow.”

Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport

“Mixed emotions after qualifying today. Valtteri did the perfect job this afternoon - he built up his performance through the session and his second pole position is a good reward. He has lost out on positions by tiny margins this year, so it's great to see him claim pole by a few hundredths this time round. As for Lewis, we knew he had a bit of a mountain to climb with the grid penalty for the gearbox change. His pace in Q2 on the super soft tyre showed that he is in good shape for tomorrow - but unfortunately he lost some time in Turn 1 on his final lap and that meant he finished the session P3. But he will start the race on the super soft tyre, so he has options for the race. I think all the pieces are in place for a really exciting Grand Prix, with a chance that the weather could mix things up as well.”

James Allison, Technical Director

“If I am completely honest, we had hoped for a little more this afternoon, but it seems churlish to be anything other than delighted by a splendid pole position for Valtteri and third place for Lewis, whose performance in Q2 showed that he has plenty of race pace to unleash tomorrow. It will surely be an interesting Grand Prix, dodging the possible rain showers and making the most of our potential at this deceptively tricky track.”

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Sebastian Vettel - 2nd, 1:04.293

“In the second run I was hoping to jump Bottas and I think I could have done better, but in the end I am pretty happy with my lap; the car is very good. Mercedes is always very quick in qualifying, but today we were close. I think it should be fine tomorrow. It will be a long race and many things can happen. The most important thing is that the car was good in qualifying. We will try to do our race and look forward. For sure it will be tough, but let’s see what we can do.”

Kimi Raikkonen - 4th, 1:04.779

“The whole weekend had been quite tricky so far and yesterday, for certain reasons, we did not have a very good day. This morning, we basically started from zero. The feeling with the car was getting better and better, but it was not easy to recover from yesterday. The qualifying session was a bit messy, with the traffic and the yellow flags. I’m not very happy overall, but considering how tricky it has been, third place is not bad. It could have been much worse. Later this evening and tomorrow morning we will go through all the different scenarios and we’ll try to pick the best one, depending on what happens in the first lap, how the weather will be and other factors.”

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Daniel Ricciardo - 5th, 1:04.896

“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 - 6th, 1:04.983

“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.”

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Romain Grosjean - 7th, 1:05.480

“We’ve been quick all weekend, Kevin and I. We’ve both been pretty happy with the car. Unfortunately, Kevin had the suspension issue in Q1, otherwise I think he would’ve been up there with us. In between Q1 and Q2 we found some performance. We had good grip in the car. I think we just lost an electric connection on the car at the end. I’m hoping it’s nothing more serious than that. It’s a long race tomorrow. It’s going to be tough on the brakes, tough on the engine and tough physically. It’s the second time this year though, after Melbourne, where I feel the tires are working well and I can really enjoy myself and push the car to the limit.”

Kevin Magnussen - 15th, 1:06.143

“We were looking good, so it’s really frustrating not getting the whole qualifying. It’s really unfortunate to break the rear suspension. It’s just bad luck. I think we could’ve gone on to Q3 today and had a really good chance of points tomorrow. Now it looks more difficult. We had been performing well all weekend. We had good pace and were in the top-10. I’m gutted not to get anything out of it.”

Guenther Steiner, team principal

“A good follow-up from yesterday in FP3 – it was solid – and we carried it over into qualifying. Unfortunately, Kevin had suspension failure. His time was good to get into Q2, but he couldn’t drive in the session. Romain made it into Q3, which is very good again to be there. He then qualified seventh. On his lap with new tires he had an electronic issue – which we’re still investigating – but we should be on the grid tomorrow without any more issues. With the pace the car has shown over the weekend here, with Kevin starting 15th, we’re still very hopeful and very confident to get into the points with him, and for sure with Romain we have to keep him there. Hopefully, we have no more mechanical or electronic issues and we have a good race tomorrow.”

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Sergio Perez - 8th, 1:05.605

“I’m feeling happy with our performance today. I think it was one of my best qualifying sessions when you consider how difficult things have been leading up to the session. I was P17 in second practice and P18 in final practice this morning. So to end qualifying in eighth place shows the mega steps we have taken to improve the car. It’s been a huge effort by the whole team. I was a bit unlucky with the yellow flag at the end of the session because there was an opportunity to improve my time. I’m really looking forward to this race and I think we will be even stronger in race conditions. We need to keep an eye on the weather, but wet or dry I think we can have a great race tomorrow.”

Esteban Ocon - 9th, 1:05.674

“I am not completely happy with ninth place, given all that happened in the session, but it’s still a good starting position. My fastest lap in Q3 was set on used tyres, but the yellow flags meant I couldn’t finish my attempt on fresh tyres. I feel I could have been a couple of places higher up, but it’s the way racing goes sometimes – you have to take your chances when you can. We need to review if there is something we could have done better, but I am still feeling positive about the weekend. We improved a lot since yesterday and the feeling I have with the car is much better now than it was during practice. I enjoy this track and it’s a place where you can overtake so hopefully we can bring home some good points tomorrow.”

Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal

“After a challenging Friday, it’s great to see both cars qualify well this afternoon. It sets us up nicely for a strong race tomorrow knowing that we have a competitive car with solid race pace. The team has done an incredible job to get on top of the balance issues we had during yesterday’s practice sessions and the car is now much more to the drivers’ liking. The yellow flag towards the end of qualifying meant we didn’t necessarily maximise the session with either car, but we can’t be disappointed with the outcome of today’s qualifying session.”

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Carlos Sainz - 10th, 1:05.726

“A good qualifying! Before the weekend started, we knew this track was going to be quite tricky for us, but we found a really good set-up in FP3 that made me feel really confident with the car. As soon as the qualifying session started, we put in very competitive lap times and a P10 is a good place to start in tomorrow’s race. It’s just a shame about the yellow flags at the end of Q3 – I wasn’t able to set a time on new tyres; my Q3 lap time was done on used tyres and we’re only a tenth behind the Force India’s and Grosjean. Unfortunately we didn’t have the chance to improve, but after a tricky start to the weekend I’m happy with today’s result and I look forward to tomorrow’s race: we have a good chance of scoring points and we need to make the most out of our chances!”

Daniil Kvyat - 14th, 1:05.884

“How frustrating. In this afternoon’s qualifying we lost all the balance and therefore all the confidence I had in the car up until now was gone; it just felt the worst it’s been all weekend: I felt I had no grip anymore and my rear was sliding a lot; it’s really disappointing! Let’s see what we can do tomorrow, the good thing is that anything can happen on race day – we now need to evaluate all the options, look into the data and understand what’s best for us.”

James Key, Technical Director

“It’s a shame, we did some good work overnight to pick-up a little more performance for today and the engineers worked very well at identifying the changes we needed to make without changing the fundamental set-up and balance we have had this weekend, that seemed to be working reasonably well this morning. The spacing between teams around us was again very tight, so we knew qualifying could be a bit of a lottery. We showed some good pace in Q1 and that looked positive for a potential Q3. Carlos found a lot of performance in his second run and that gave us a good reference point for Q2 with him. Then he put in a good lap during his first run in Q2, which was enough to see him through to Q3 – that was a great job. We knew we had a chance of Q3, although it was tight, but Carlos made it happen as we hoped, so very pleased with that! Sadly, he didn’t really get to show what we could’ve done in Q3 due to the yellow flags at the end. He did his first run on a used set of tyres just as a reference and we ran the new set at the end, but two yellow flags on that lap meant that his lap was not possible – of course, this affected many other people as well, but we had not had a new tyre run by that stage so we will never know what progress we may have made. For Daniil, he’s been happy with his car this weekend but this afternoon he felt a little bit of instability in some of the slow-speed corners, which he didn’t have this morning. Maybe this is something to do with a bit of wind or track temperature difference that we had in qualifying compared to the other practice session. However, he was less comfortable and unfortunately didn’t quite get a lap together - that we knew he was capable of - to get through to Q3. He starts P14, but we know he’s got the raw pace to do the job here and I’m sure we can progress from there tomorrow – it gives us freedom of tyre choice and strategy too so, although we’re a little bit further back than we’d like to be, not all is lost. With Carlos, we’ll do our best from P10 and see what we can do. We’ve got some cars ahead that we’d like to challenge and some cars behind that we’d like to keep behind, so there’s plenty of thinking and work to do this evening and we look forward to a good challenge tomorrow.”

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Stroll and Palmer were impressive again during qualy.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

Quick question - can anyone point me to where I may find race telemetry info that includes at least laptimes, tires, and pitstops, for the 2017 season so far? Thanks.

 

[bgil66]

I'm in the USA and go to nbcsn to see the sched for the race and find out its on cnbc, who the heck has that station?? Now gotta wait for SD replay

 

[Peter Hooper]

Quick question - can anyone point me to where I may find race telemetry info that includes at least laptimes, tires, and pitstops, for the 2017 season so far? Thanks.

F1 fanatic certainly has a lot of data so check that out.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

F1 fanatic certainly has a lot of data so check that out.

Thanks. I'm browsing through it right now and also the F1 website but so far no luck finding a more detailed telemetry table. I'm mostly looking for laps, laptimes, and tires used because I'm trying to help with getting tires right for a F1 mod in the works.

 

[Peter Hooper]

Thanks. I'm browsing through it right now and also the F1 website but so far no luck finding a more detailed telemetry table. I'm mostly looking for laps, laptimes, and tires used because I'm trying to help with getting tires right for a F1 mod in the works.

F1 Fanatic definitely has the tyres used but not sure where you will find the complete lap time data. It does have a lap time chart but its not particularly easy to see the exact times from it.

 

[Peter Hooper]

Stroll and Palmer were impressive again during qualy.

Tbf to Stroll the car has been a dog here and he was less than a tenth off his team mate so definitely the car was the problem yesterday.

 

[Vortlas]

Throwback to the amazing 1977 layout (on Automobilista)

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Bottas Secures Easy Win in Dull Austrian Grand Prix

Valtteri Bottas scored his second career victory in Formula One as the Mercedes man never looked threatened in the 2017 Austrian Grand Prix.

With 71 laps of relatively uneventful action out on the circuit in Austria, Valtteri Bottas romped home to victory ahead of Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel, with once again Daniel Ricciardo giving his Red Bull team something to cheer about with a home podium for the Austrian owned team.

Following his five place grid penalty it was always going to be a difficult day for championship challenger Lewis Hamilton starting down in eight place, and the Englishman had a poor day in the #44 Mercedes as he struggled home in a disappointing fourth position, again losing a handful of points in the race for the 2017 drivers title.

Tyres would be the focal point of the event today, with many drivers limping to the end of the race on heavily worn rubber. Unfortunately the increased wear of the Pirelli tyres would not quite set up a grandstand finish everyone was hoping for at the end of a pretty uneventful race, and the majority of the finishing order would remain as it had at the end of the final pitstop phase.

Hamilton and Ricciardo would put up a spirited fight for the final couple of laps as Vettel closed in on Bottas at the front of the field, however despite getting his car up alongside the Australian Red Bull driver it would be Ricciardo that held out to the flag for the final place on the podium in Austra, with Bottas doing likewise at the front of the field to pick up the full 25 points haul.

Further down the field it was a good day for Haas and Romain Grosjean in sixth position, behind the two Mercedes and Ferrari drivers but holding station in front of a fast but rather invisible Force India team, with Perez eventually beating his rookie teammate over the line in what would be seventh and eight place results. Keeping themselves in the fight with Force India in the constructors championship, Williams will record a remarkably solid result considering the lack of pace in the two Martini sponsored cars, with Massa and Stroll eventually wrapping up points for ninth and tenth places respectively.

Sadly for the Dutch Army lining the side of the circuit all weekend, it would be a short day for Red Bull superstar Max Verstappen, as a difficult start put the Dutch driver right into the danger zone of turn one, only to be collected by a spinning Fernando Alonso as the McLaren man was rotated by an out of control Danii Kvyat in his Toro Rosso car.

1. Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes - 1:21:48.523 0
2. Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari +0.658s 0
3. Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer +6.012s 0
4. Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes +7.430s 0
5. Kimi Räikkönen - Ferrari +20.370s 0
6. Romain Grosjean - Haas Ferrari +73.160s 0
7. Sergio Perez - Force India Mercedes +1 lap 0
8. Esteban Ocon - Force India Mercedes +1 lap 0
9. Felipe Massa - Williams Mercedes +1 lap 0
10. Lance Stroll - Williams Mercedes +1 lap 0
11. Jolyon Palmer - Renault +1 lap 0
12. Stoffel Vandoorne - McLaren Honda +1 lap 0
13. Nico Hulkenberg - Renault +1 lap 0
14. Pascal Wehrlein - Sauber Ferrari +1 lap 0
15. Marcus Ericsson - Sauber Ferrari +2 laps 0
16. Daniil Kvyat KVY Toro Rosso +3 laps 0

Carlos Sainz SAI Toro Rosso 44 DNF 0
Kevin Magnussen MAG Haas Ferrari 29 DNF 0
Fernando Alonso ALO McLaren Honda 1 DNF 0
Max Verstappen VER Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer 0 DNF 0

 

[mikhail000]

Thanks. I'm browsing through it right now and also the F1 website but so far no luck finding a more detailed telemetry table. I'm mostly looking for laps, laptimes, and tires used because I'm trying to help with getting tires right for a F1 mod in the works.

Used to be on F1.COM but now it's on FIA.COM under events and timing for each race instead.
Example:
http://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-championship/season-2016/event-timing-information-10