Revealed: Sprint quali data shows the reason why Mercedes are now ahead of Ferrari

Max Verstappen took pole position in sprint qualifying for the 2024 Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix and as expected, the battle for P1 was intense.

Lando Norris and McLaren were in the spotlight but with the Red Bull driver again victorious and also again, we saw Mercedes ahead of Ferrari.

The story of qualifying for the sprint race

The big story of the sprint quali session was the confirmation of Mercedes as the third force on the grid. The Silver Arrows are already ahead of Ferrari, with more problems than successes since the Monaco GP. The performance of the W15 has taken a step forward since Imola and the SF-24, on the contrary, has stagnated.

George Russell was the best in the battle between the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers with a P4. Charles Leclerc will start P10 tomorrow after having an incident with the anti-stall and not being able to set a time in SQ3. Carlos Sainz was P5 just ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who had to deal with Leclerc’s dirty air in his flying lap and couldn’t set a good Sector 2.

But where was the real and big difference between Mercedes and Ferrari? The answer is in the fast corners. Specifically, in the first and the last two corners of the Red Bull Ring. Ferrari again had problems in the medium/high speed corners just like in Barcelona, where when introducing the revised floor some porpoising was reported due to increased air suction in the rear area.

This difference between the Mercedes and Ferrari is already recurrent and is the real ‘biggest’ difference between the Brackley-based team and the Scuderia. Apart from this, the differences are really minimal, perhaps with a more direct impact of the drivers themselves, but the reality is that we can already place Mercedes as the third force on the grid only behind Red Bull and McLaren.

On the other hand, in the fight for sprint pole, as we had already anticipated in our predictions , the battle between Max Verstappen and McLaren was going to be a matter of thousandths of a second. And so it was, although once again the Red Bull driver made the difference to take P1. However, unlike at other circuits as had been the trend for some races now, this time it seems that the RB20 is slightly superior to the MCL38 at the Red Bull Ring.

The RB20 is able to give Verstappen the confidence to brake late and recover at the end of the straight from the better corner entry of the MCL38 and consequently better acceleration out of the corner. Norris had a top speed of 321 km/h on his SQ3 lap compared to 324 km/h for Verstappen.

More from the sprint session in Austria

👉 Austrian GP: Max Verstappen claims pole as Charles Leclerc fumbles in Sprint Qualy

👉 Lewis Hamilton rues ‘disastrous’ Austrian GP sprint qualifying after ‘very bad laps’

In the track dominance graph we can see how, for example, despite having a lower relative speed through Turn 1, Verstappen is able to get to the end of Sector 1 with more top speed and obviously, he makes a big difference attacking in turns 9 and 10.

Read next: Winners and losers from 2024 Austrian Grand Prix sprint qualifying