Max Verstappen put his Red Bull on pole once again in Austria, but was pushed to the very limit by Charles Leclerc who put his Ferrari on the front row with a lap just 0.048sec behind the reigning champion.
Lando Norris performed well to put his McLaren fourth, ahead of podium contenders Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in fifth and seventh respectively.
Sergio Perez failed to make it through to Q3 for the fourth consecutive race, getting all of his hot laps in Q2 deleted for track limits violations to land 15th on the grid.
George Russell also failed to put his Mercedes into the top 10, getting a lap deleted before failing to produce the raw pace to make it through to the final shootout.
Nyck de Vries failed to impress once again in qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix, finishing Q1 dead last.
Sprint weekend setup
A Friday qualifying session in Austria set the positions for Sunday's feature race, with the session pushed back from its usual Saturday slot by the weekend's sprint race status.
Drivers will go head to get over single laps again on Saturday to set the order for the sprint race, held later in the day, but Saturday's proceedings will have no impact on the running order for Sunday.
Here is a full rundown on those all-important final qualifying positions.
F1 Qualifying Results: Austrian Grand Prix 2023
1. Max Verstappen [Red Bull] - 1:04.391sec
2. Charles Leclerc [Ferrari] - +0.048sec
3. Carlos Sainz [Ferrari] - +0.190sec
4. Lando Norris [McLaren] - +0.267sec
5. Lewis Hamilton [Mercedes] - +0.428sec
6. Lance Stroll [Aston Martin] - +0.502sec
7. Fernando Alonso [Aston Martin] - +0.520sec
8. Nico Hulkenberg [Haas] - +0.699sec
9. Pierre Gasly [Alpine] - +0.779sec
10. Alex Albon [Williams] - +1.432sec
ELIMINATED IN Q2
11. George Russell [Mercedes]
12. Esteban Ocon [Alpine]
13. Oscar Piastri [McLaren]
14. Valtteri Bottas [Alfa Romeo]
15. Sergio Perez [Red Bull]
ELIMINATED IN Q1
16. Yuki Tsunoda [AlphaTauri]
17. Zhou Guanyu [Alfa Romeo]
18. Logan Sargeant [Williams]
19. Kevin Magnussen [Haas]
20. Nyck de Vries [AlphaTauri]
How does F1 Qualifying work?
The 60-minute qualifying session is split into three finite windows which provides a dramatic prelude to Sunday's big race.
The bottom five drivers are eliminated at the end of Q1, with a further five eliminated after Q2.
Then Q3 gives us a shootout between the remaining 10 drivers in the battle for positions at the front of the grid.
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