Another promising Friday for Ferrari – but this time they qualified well too

Much like a masterful musical composition, a classic novel or an Oscar-winning movie, great sport is all about the build up of tension, slowly amping up over time before being released in a rapturous climax.

Formula 1’s sprint race weekends seem to go completely against this tried-and-tested structure. After another exciting qualifying session that sees the Austrian Grand Prix as finely balanced as it was a year ago, with just half a tenth between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc suggesting Ferrari can offer a genuine challenge to Red Bull, all that intrigue can be forgotten about for 24 hours.

Instead, the grand prix weekend is effectively placed on pause for a day, while the field regroup for a Saturday of sprint racing which has zero bearing on the grand prix itself.

As last year’s Austrian Grand Prix was also a sprint round, it serves as a helpful case study to offer some kind of idea as to how Saturday’s sprint race may well play out. However, those who are hoping to see a white-knuckle thriller over 23 laps are likely to be disappointed.

Last year’s sprint race happened to have the exact same three drivers – Verstappen, Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr – starting from the top three grid positions as they will in Sunday’s grand prix. All three would finish the sprint race exactly where they started, without a single change of position between the trio across the 26 minutes of racing.

However, the grid for Saturday afternoon’s race will be determined by a second three-stage knockout session in the space of 24 hours. So before the lights go out for the first of two times this weekend, the first question to be answered is whether anyone can prevent Verstappen from securing pole for the Saturday morning sprint race.

By getting within half a second of Verstappen at the line at the end of Q3, Leclerc was closer to the championship leader than anyone has been for the six pole positions that Verstappen has taken so far in 2023. He had actually been within one corner of snatching pole for Ferrari for the second time this season – having gained a tenth over Verstappen through a faster turn nine – only to lose his advantage with a slower exit out of the final corner.

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That telemetry trace will haunt Leclerc, but it will also give him and Ferrari immense confidence heading into sprint race qualifying knowing that, once again during a sprint round, Red Bull appear to be within their grasp.

“We tried to add a bit more front wing for the last run in Q3 and it probably was a tiny bit too much,” Leclerc admitted after qualifying. “But at the end it’s part of the game. Very, very close to pole position, which is a good sign.”

Based on practice and qualifying, it’s safe to assume that Verstappen and Red Bull are again the team to beat heading into Saturday. However, Ferrari are clearly the ones closest to their rivals this weekend.

In this respect the picture is similar to what we saw after Friday in Canada two weeks ago. There too Ferrari looked quick, but they failed to deliver on their potential in the wet Saturday qualifying session, and started the race in the midfield. This time they know they’ll be up at the sharp end.

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton assessed that his team were “possibly around third fastest” behind Red Bull and Ferrari. He and team mate George Russell qualifying only fifth and 11th, respectively, for Sunday’s grand prix.

But despite showing much stronger race pace last time out in Canada and being the quickest cars on track during the grand prix here at the Red Bull Ring last year, Leclerc remains cautious about Ferrari’s chances of challenging Red Bull in racing conditions.

“I will be very surprised if we’ve got as good a pace as last year,” he admitted. “But again, we don’t know. I think that’s where we need to confirm the upgrades that we’ve put on the car, whether we’ve gained the performance that we expected in the race.”

One element that could pose a problem for Ferrari’s chances in the sprint race is tyre wear. Managing tyres has not been a strength of Ferrari since the start of the season and with the three softest compounds available this weekend, keeping tyres in the right condition over the 100km of the race will be vital.

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Last year, the entire top ten starters chose to run the race on the medium compound, with Leclerc keeping the gap under three seconds for the entire 23 laps, closing it only when Verstappen’s lap times began to drop off slightly in the closing laps. While it’s difficult to expect the same for this year’s sprint race – not least because the grid is yet to be determined – Sainz does expect tyres will play a big part in determining the results of the sprint race.

“It is true that last year we managed to put Max under pressure and beat him eventually,” he said. “But it’s a different year, a different car, and they’ve become a lot stronger since then.

“Even a short stint on the sprint race is still a pretty long stint for the tyres that we might use because we’re talking about 20-something laps, which is more or less the stint length that you do in a normal race. So deg, race pace still plays a massive part in that.”

Unlike last year, DRS will be activated from the start of the second lap of the sprint race. With three DRS zones along the many long straights around the Spielberg circuit, that small change could make a big difference to the kind of race we see. In last year’s sprint race, 18 of the 19 runners were within DRS range of one second of the car ahead by the end of the opening lap – which could see the early part of the race become one large DRS train.

But again in 2023 there is another factor to consider: rain. The current forecasts see the risk of a wet sprint race decreasing compared to earlier forecasts, but there remains a 60% chance that sprint race qualifying will take place in the wet. That could offer a series of opportunities to the midfield, given that the top nine cars in Friday’s qualifying were separated by less than a second – and would have been had Alexander Albon’s best Q3 time not been deleted for exceeding track limits.

Whatever the case on Saturday, Ferrari will have to wait until Sunday for their opportunity to take on Verstappen for the win for the second successive season at Spielberg. But what happens over those 23 laps will give Red Bull, Ferrari and all of us watching a much clearer idea as to how much of a chance they truly have.

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Teams’ progress vs 2022

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