Red Bull's Max Verstappen secured pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix at Friday's qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring outside of Speilberg, Austria.

This was the Dutchman's 26th pole, his fifth at Spielberg. Starting alongside him on the grid on Sunday afternoon will be Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, second just 48 thousandths off pole, while in the other Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, starts from third on the second row with McLaren's Lando Norris alongside him at 1.04.658 seconds.

"It was a difficult session today, it's very hard to see the white lines as we can see from the number of infringements, but a superb job from Max to get that pole despite needing to be a little more conservative due to track limits," said Red Bull Team Principal, Christian Horner.

"It wasn't a straightforward qualifying because of all the track limits," said Verstappen. "It's very hard to judge the white line here, a lot of us got caught out so at least it wasn't just us. Today was all about surviving, we just needed to bank the laps as we weren't able to push hard."

"Congratulations to Charles and Carlos who made no mistakes and always respected the track limits, performing competitively from start to finish," said Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal.

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth with Aston Martin Racing having an excellent qualifying session as Lance Stroll qualified sixth and two time World Champion Fernando Alanzo qualifying sixth.

"I was happy with how the AMR23 was feeling today and pleased with my final lap," said Stroll. "I think we got everything we could have out of that Qualifying session."

"This track has always been a challenge for our car in the past and it showed again today, so I'll take P5. It's a good, strong position to start the race from on Sunday. I'm not quite sure yet, where exactly we stand with our race pace, possibly we're third or fourth quickest," said Hamilton.

Nico Hulkenberg displayed Haas Racing's continueing improvement qualifying eighth and Williams Racing had an excellent Friday with Alex Albon qualifying tenth.

"Q3 is always good news. We know though the difficulty is in the race for us, but I'm happy to have another smooth qualifying. I extracted everything from the car, and it was a clean execution from myself and the team, which is a positive, and very good for today," said Hulkenberg.

"We weren't perfect but when it counted, we did a good job, kept the laps clean, and got a decent grid position as a result," said Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance for Williams Racing.

Alpine Racing's Esteban Ocon qualified ninth.

In the earlier Free Practice session Verstappen ran the quickest time followed by Sainz, Leclerc, Hamilton and Red Bull's Perez.

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:04.391	150.014 mph
2	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:04.439	0.048
3	Sainz		Ferrari		1:04.581	0.190
4	Norris		McLaren		1:04.658	0.267
5	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:04.819	0.428
6	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:04.893	0.502
7	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:04.911	0.520
8	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:05.090	0.699
9	Gasly		Alpine		1:05.170	0.779
10	Albon		Williams	1:05.823	1.432
11	Russell		Mercedes	1:05.428	
12	Ocon		Alpine		1:05.453	
13	Piastri		McLaren		1:05.605	
14	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:05.680	
15	Perez		Red Bull	2:06.688	
16	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:05.784	
17	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:05.818	
18	Sargeant	Williams	1:05.948	
19	Magnussen	Haas		1:05.971	
20	de Vries	AlphaTauri	1:05.974