![\"SPIELBERG,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/00249896-614.jpg\"\/)
\nAlex Dunne and his father Noel<\/p>\n
George Russell took a controversial pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix after Max Verstappen crashed out at the penultimate corner.<\/p>\n
Verstappen’s accident brought out the yellow flags in the final seconds, and with Charles Leclerc leading the way, his Ferrari mechanics celebrated their man taking pole.<\/p>\n
But Russell surprisingly stormed through to take a second pole in as many races beating Leclerc\u2019s time by 0.236 seconds.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton finished third, a place clear of championship leader Kimi Antonelli, with Verstappen in fifth.<\/p>\n
However, Russell could face an investigation for failing to slow sufficiently under yellow flags with the stewards noting an infringement, but they elected to take no further action.<\/p>\n
Protesting his innocence on the radio, Russell said: “Lifted on the entry to the corner. Lost a lot of time.”<\/p>\n
Afterwards, he added: “I feel incredible. I saw the yellow. I had a big lift. I was five tenths up going into the final corner, and I crossed the line two and a half tenths up so I should be OK.”<\/p>\n
Russell struggled in the early stages of qualifying and was urged by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff to “just drive” as he faced being eliminated from Q2.<\/p>\n
Russell made it into the third phase of qualifying and trailed Antonelli by just 0.043sec after their first attempts in Q3, with Verstappen just 0.061s back.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who made a mistake on his first attempt after he ran wide at Turn 3, temporarily took top spot and was then demoted by Leclerc, before Verstappen lost control of his Red Bull through the last but one corner and skidded through the gravel and into the barrier.<\/p>\n
Verstappen’s crash looked to bring an early end to a frenetic session only for Russell to burst through with a final throw of the dice to claim what could be a critical pole, with team-mate Antonelli, who he trails by 50 points in the championship race, down in fourth.<\/p>\n
\nAlex Dunne and his father Noel<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Alex Dunne finished fourth in the F2 sprint race earlier in the day, moving through the grid brilliantly after starting in ninth.<\/p>\n
The Offaly driver will start from the front row for Sunday’s main race. The sprint race sees the top 10 on the grid reversed – meaning a fifth row start for the Rodin man.<\/p>\n
He showed good form to rise five places and was chasing down a podium spot as the 28 laps concluded. The race was won by John Bennett of Trident.<\/p>\n
Dunne remains in fourth place in the standings after adding five points to his championship haul and is now only one point behind Rafael Camara in third and 18 points behind leader Gabriele Mini.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell took a controversial pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix after Max Verstappen crashed out at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-521518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}