Charles Leclerc earns Red Bull taskmaster’s plaudits after a breathtaking final lap in Austrian GP qualifying session

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has praised Charles Leclerc for his stunning lap in the 2023 Austrian GP qualifying on Friday as he finished P2 behind Max Verstappen.

The Ferrari driver did not leave any inch of lap time as he pushed and hustled his heavily upgraded SF-90 to the front row of the grid for the main race alongside the reigning double-world champion. Marko recognized that Charles Leclerc was probably risking a bit more than Verstappen to extract the lap time.

Speaking to RacingNews365, the Austrian said:

"I had already welcomed that pole position in advance. Max drives his laps with confidence and that should be enough. Meanwhile, we see Charles Leclerc risking a lot more.

"You really saw how he had to work in those last two corners, but what worked for him at the time. Or it means that I don't know if Ferrari can maintain the upward line, but I wanted to mention it anyway."

Charles Leclerc analyzes his P2 finish at the Austrian GP qualifying session

Speaking to the media after the qualifying, the Ferrari driver stated that he was happy with a cleaner session as the focus of the team remains to improve the race pace.

He said:

"It feels good to finally have a clean qualifying again and to be back on the front row. The feeling from the car has been a bit better in the last three races and then in Q1 and Q2, it was all about building up to that lap in Q3 and I managed to put everything into that last lap and got very close to Max.

"We hadn’t expected to be that close to the Red Bull so it’s a good step forward and I would like to thank everyone back at the factory for all the work they have done in the last few weeks in order to bring an updated package at Spielberg, earlier than planned.

"It’s really impressive and helped us to perform well today. Now we need to confirm that in the races, tomorrow and Sunday. Starting from the Sprint we need to focus on consistency and we will see on Sunday if we have the same race pace as in Montreal."

It will be interesting to see if he can truly challenge Max Verstappen in the main race and the sprint race on Saturday to claim his first win of the season and also his first win in over a year in the sport.