Hamilton loses out to Bottas for pole in Austrian GP

The Finn was just 0.019 seconds quicker than the world champion, who made a mistake on his first run and just failed to match Bottas on his second. Hamilton’s title rival Sebastian Vettel, of Ferrari, was third but 0.334secs behind.

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen took fourth ahead of the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo, who appeared to be having a dispute during the session.

Bottas blitzed the first runs in the top 10 shootout, while both Hamilton and Vettel made errors. The Finn was nearly 0.5secs clear of Hamilton after the Briton ran wide at Turn Three, the second hairpin, and lost speed all the way down the following straight.

Vettel also ran wide and lost time - but in his case at Turn Four. Hamilton put it together on his second run but was on the back foot and Bottas improved anyway to move the goalposts even further ahead.

Vettel and the Mercedes are starting on different types of tyres after Hamilton and Bottas chose to make it through Q2 on the super-softs, while Vettel will use the grippier ultra-softs off the line. It was that combination that led to Vettel getting a better start than both Mercedes cars in France last week-end, and then colliding with Bottas when he had to back out of a challenge at the first corner.

Vettel also has to hope he is not penalised for holding up Renault’s Carlos Sainz during qualifying, for which he is under investigation.

Red Bull were struggling for pace on their home track, with Verstappen fifth and Ricciardo seventh, split by Haas driver Romain Grosjean.

But there appeared to be tension on track as Ricciardo seemed to slow at one point in Q3 to try to let Verstappen by, but the Dutchman refused the invitation.