Lewis Hamilton will start on pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix after making the most of the changeable conditions, ahead of Nico Rosberg will be demoted five places on the grid due to a gearbox change.
Q1 and Q2 were dry but light rain at the start of Q3 meant all of the cars had to use the intermediate tyres.
The last few laps of Q3 were chaotic as the track improved and times dropped.
Hamilton will start on pole position with Nico Hulkenberg joining him on the front row after qualifying an impressive third.
Sebastian Vettel qualified fourth but will be demoted five places due to a gearbox change.
Jenson Button was an impressive fifth for McLaren ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. Valtteri Bottas, Max Verstappen and Felipe Massa rounded out the top 10 in qualifying.
Hamilton set the early pace in the first part of qualifying and was the first man this weekend to dip into the 1m06s bracket.
After suffering a suspension issue in FP3, Rosberg took to the circuit with nine minutes to go and quickly asserted his authority on the F1 field setting a 1m06.516s. Vettel, who will also drop five places back, was second fastest at this stage.
Two drivers suffered suspension damage. Sergio Perez, who progressed into Q2, suffered rear suspension damage. Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat was not as lucky, crashing heavily at Turn 8 after running on the top of the yellow kerbs. The red flag was deployed for a short period as the marshals recovered Kvyat’s car.
The session restarted with just under two minutes remaining on the clock. Carlos Sainz suffered an engine failure on his out lap which resulted in the yellow flags being deloped in sector one meaning the majority of drivers could not improve their fastest time.
Kevin Magnussen, Jolyon Palmer, Rio Haryanto, Daniil Kvyat, Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr all failed to progress into Q2.
Only 14 drivers took to the circuit in Q2 after both Perez and Sainz could not take part due to their respective issues.
Rain was on the horizon which meant everyone got out on the circuit early on. After struggling for much of the weekend, Hamilton put together a mighty lap to go two-tenths faster than Rosberg on a 1m06.228s.
Interestingly, both Ferraris opted to set their fastest time on the supersoft tyre. Despite being on the slower tyre, both drivers progressed into Q2 with ease. Red Bull followed suit and improved on their initial times in Q2 with the supersoft tyres.
Manor’s Pascal Wehrlein continued to impress and will start an impressive 12th behind Haas F1’s Esteban Gutierrez.
Esteban Gutierrez, Pascal Wehrlein, Romain Grosjean, Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez all failed to progress into Q3.
