Max Verstappen has hailed third place on the gri⛄d for Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix as 🌺an “amazing” result for Red Bull.

Verstappen recovered from a big cra๊sh 🐓during Friday practice to qualify third for Red Bull’s home race in Spielberg, as he ended up just 0.436s adrift of polesitter Charles Leclerc.

The Dutchman’s appearance on the second-row was partly aided by an issue that prev🌼ented Sebastian Vettel from taking part in Q3, but he was still able🍰 to split the Mercedes drivers.

“I’m actually really, ൩this is an amazing result at a track that is not easy for us,” Verstappen said.

“I think just in gener♍al the whole weekend, our performance has been much better.

“I was really happy with the car throug🥀hout qualifying 𒉰and in the corners as well we were very competitive.

“We𒐪 do know that we are lacking quite a bit of pace compared to Ferrari and Mercedes on the straights but knowing that this is not a great tr😼ack for us, so a great result for qualifying.”

Verstappen expected to struggle and admitted he had not be🔯en looking forward to qualifying, but praised Red Bull for introducing some small performance updates, which he felt were key to his strong showing.

“I was actually not looking forward t𒁃o qualifying because I knew that it was going to be hard but actually with the updates we brought to the car we had really good performance,” he explained.

“I think the💙 things we brought, they just gave me more grip in general. I didn’t really have a big problem before with a lot of oversteer or understeer, just not a lot of overall grip. I think that seems to be improved again and that’s very positive.”