Shock: Ahead of the weekend, very few people would have expected Lewis Hamilton to start from eighth on Sunday's grid. Five of those grid positions can be accounted for by his gearbox penalty, but he also has himself to blame for not maximising the performance of his car and minimising the impact of the grid drop. On his first Q3 run he locked up and ran wide at Turn 3 and on his second he clouted the apex kerb at Turn 1 before a yellow flag ruled out an improvement later in the lap. After the disappointment of Baku, it appears as though Hamilton's bad luck has followed him to Austria, making a strong race performance crucial in order to stop the rot and limit the damage to his championship campaign.
Shocker: On a track where Williams locked out the front row in 2014, Felipe Massa and Lance Stroll had to settle for 17th and 18th on Saturday. An issue on Massa's car meant he only made it out on track towards the end of the session and he admitted to a "big oversteer" mistake in Turn 6. But it would be unfair to pin the blame on the drivers as the updated FW40 hasn't been performing on low-fuel all weekend. The team is confident it will be better over long runs, but starting from the penultimate row of the grid both drivers will need a very strong race in order to break the top ten.
A missing handshake: Lewis Hamilton is not someone who likes to be told what to do, so it was not a huge surprise that he declined to shake Vettel's hand when requested to do so at the end of the post-qualifying interviews. On the face of it, it appeared to be a very public snub towards his championship rival but just moments earlier Hamilton had approached Vettel for a handshake before the interviews kicked off. A similar incident occurred in Abu Dhabi last year when Hamilton and his then-championship rival Nico Rosberg declined to take part in a stage-managed handshake in a pre-race press conference. Make of it what you will...
Wild bull: Max Verstappen appeared intent on using every inch of Red Bull's home circuit in Q3. On his first hot lap he clobbered the apex kerb at Turn 3 and on his next attempt he lost the rear of his Red Bull over the kerb at Turn 1 before finishing his session with a spin in the gravel at Turn 7. The messy laps only left him 0.087s off teammate Daniel Ricciardo, but he had the pace to be ahead.
Star of qualifying: On a race weekend when teammate Lewis Hamilton has been on the back foot, Valtteri Bottas stepped up and delivered in qualifying. He secured the second pole position of his career with a solid lap of the Red Bull Ring, which also set a new qualifying lap record by over two seconds. An honourable mention should go to Romain Grosjean for qualifying seventh, although teammate Kevin Magnussen had looked like the quicker of the two Haas drivers all weekend until a rear suspension failure in Q2.
Turn 1 prediction: With Hamilton starting from eighth on super-soft tyres while all those around him start on the stickier ultra-softs, he will have to be careful not to lose more positions in the opening two corners. Meanwhile, expect drivers to favour the outside line through Turn 1 (if they get the choice) in order to open up the corner as much as possible and get a run on rival cars up to the circuit's best passing point at Turn 3.