The Red Bull Ring is a short, punchy lap, but even by Spielberg’s standards the margins at the front of the field for qualifying were tight.

Just 0.029 seconds decided pole position in Max Verstappen’s favour over Charles Leclerc, which equates to roughly 90 centimetres around this 4.318-kilometres track. Carlos Sainz was close too, just 0.053 seconds further back relative to his teammate, promising a comprehensive Ferrari challenge.

More promising still is that in Q2 Lewis Hamilton was just 0.188 seconds shy of top spot, hinting at a possible three-way fight — more on that below.

The only slightly sour note was the Verstappen-supporting crowd’s response to Hamilton’s Q3 crash. While it was relatively low impact and he was always likely to be unhurt, it was a reminder — as the incessant booing at Silverstone was — of the toxicity still emanating from last year’s title showdown between the Dutchman and the Briton.

MERCEDES WASTE ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY

So far this is shaping up as another strong weekend for Mercedes, which would make this the first time this season the team has had two positive rounds in a row.

But as with its previous two genuinely encouraging weekends of the year before arriving in Austria, the team has left performance on the table.

In Spain Hamilton was taken out on the first lap and forced to recover through the field. He had race-winning pace but couldn’t get close enough to the front in the time available.

Last week at Silverstone he again looked set for a victory battle until the late-race safety car neutralised his strategy.

This weekend both Hamilton and George Russell were looking good to vie for the top three on the grid, if not the front row, but both found the barriers in a deeply unusual double qualifying retirement for the German marque.

It was uncharacteristic particularly for Hamilton, whose unforced error count is very low, and spoke at least in part to “experimenting” team boss Toto Wolff admitted the team was undertaking with the day’s single practice session.

Hamilton sunk to 10th once Q3 was over, and though the Briton was clearly disappointed, notable was that he was also clearly heartened by how competitive his car had been at a track that was expected to challenge his W13.

“I’m incredibly disappointed in myself, ultimately,” he said. “We were fighting for a top three I think, and I don’t have an answer — I just lost the back end in turn 7 and that was that.

“I’m in encouraged for sure to see our performance. We were not expecting to be as close as that today, so that’s a huge positive from the team.

“I’m really quite far back, so I don’t know what’s possible from there, but we have a sprint race as well, so I hope that tomorrow I can make up some lost time.”

Russell, who qualified fifth, was similarly buoyed, noting Mercedes typically has better race-day performances than it does during qualifying.

“I think I probably went the wrong way with the set-up for qualifying but [I’m] maybe in a good place for the race,” he said.

“We ordinarily have better race pace than we do qualifying pace. We’re definitely there in the fight.

“As a team, probably our best qualifying of the year in terms of pace, but probably the worst in terms of outcome. That’s racing.”

The team’s expected race pace comes on the right weekend thanks to the sprint format. The challenge now is to execute more cleanly than it has at any of its previous standout weekends.

McLAREN’S WORST QUALIFYING OF THE YEAR

Sprint weekends demand perfection, but McLaren’s been far from it so far this weekend.

Teams and drivers get just one practice session to prepare for qualifying, from which point parc fermé conditions mean car set-up is fundamentally locked in. You either get it right or get it wrong in that hour, and wherever you land dictates the rest of the weekend.

McLaren got it really wrong.

Set-up quite aside, the team was afflicted by as spate of technical problems that heavily disrupted its practice program and in one case even triggered a red flag.

Lando Norris was forced to park by the side of the track in FP1 with smoke billowing from his seat, and though his MCL36 seemed largely otherwise unscathed, it wasn’t returned to the Briton’s garage until too late in the hour to send it back out with repairs.

Norris subsequently switched to an old-spec power unit for qualifying. It’s not the first time he’s done so in recent races either, having reverted to an old motor ahead of qualifying in Canada too.

Daniel Ricciardo was barely faring better. His DRS flap was oscillating dramatically for much of the session — he was hamstrung by a broken DRS in last week’s British Grand Prix too — and by the time the team eventually found a temporary fix, it was too late for him to undertake a run on the soft tyres.

The Australian was subsequently knocked out 16th in Q1, and though Norris progressed to Q2, he suffered a serious lack of confidence in his brakes such that he ended up 15th, just one place ahead on the grid, its worst combined result of the season.

That McLaren normally thrives at the Red Bull Racing — Norris has stood on the podium here in 2020 and 2021 — makes it only more shocking an outcome.

The team is enduring a bout of unspectacular form in the last month spanning back to its team order kerfuffle in Azerbaijan. That preceded an off-pace and badly managed race in Canada and a pit stop bungle and technical problems in Britain.

Meanwhile Alpine has been progressively closing the now six-point gap to fourth in the constructors standings, and both Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso cracked the top 10 in qualifying this weekend, the French team currently by far the more consistent machine.

Norris was at least optimistic the car had the pace to be in the top 10 in qualifying with a clean run and said he was looking forward to making up ground in the sprint and race, but it’s a long way back into the points from here.

GOOD DAY: HAAS

Styria is the site of one of Haas’s all-time best race result, a fourth and fifth at the 2018 Austrian Grand Prix, and this year the team’s recorded an emphatic qualifying result by getting both drivers into Q3.

It was a nice morale booster for the team, which isn’t bringing the year’s sole upgrade package until just before the mid-season break — that it could do so well with so little practice time is validation of its approach to try to squeeze performance form the car as it is through a deep understanding of how to get the best from it.

Seeing Mick Schumacher match Kevin Magnussen will also have been pleasing for the team, the German just over a tenth slower than the Dane.

The only problem is that the team also got both cars into Q3 only two weeks ago, a the Canadian Grand Prix, and it subsequently failed to score with either of them. Ironically it got both cars into the points last week despite both drivers being knocked out in Q1.

So which Haas will wet get for the rest of the weekend? The plucky above-weight punchers or the sinking stones?

BAD DAY: ASTON MARTIN

Aston Martin just cannot crack its 2022 car in qualifying trim. While its performances have improved since its Spanish Grand Prix major upgrade package, it’s sorely lacked consistency, particularly over one lap.

Yes, the silver lining is that the team’s scored with at least one car at all but one race since Barcelona, but it’s inevitably doing so from far further back on the grid than it should — and this is the third race in a row both drivers have been knocked out in Q3.

Compounding matters is that both drivers were especially hard hit by track limits infringements, cruelling nay hope Sebastian Vettel in particular had of escaping into Q2.

The sprint gives the team a chance to exercise that race pace for a better grid spot for Sunday, but at the halfway point of the season this well-resourced team should be well clear of the bottom of the pack in qualifying by now.