The Australian finished Friday qualifying with a 1m22.101s, placing him 12th in the order and handing him sprint pole under the reverse-grid format.
It gives Wharton another front-row opportunity just one round after taking his first victory of the 2026 season in the sprint race at Barcelona.
The result also comes at the same venue where Wharton claimed his first Formula 3 win 12 months ago, having converted sprint pole into victory at the Red Bull Ring last season.
Wharton started second for the Barcelona sprint last time out before fighting back from a tricky opening lap to win for Prema Racing, giving both himself and the team their first victory of the campaign.
The 19-year-old is now well placed to chase another strong Saturday result, although he admitted his qualifying performance in Spielberg had not been his cleanest.
“Overall quite a lucky day, I didn’t quite put it together on the driving side today,” he said.
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“The car was definitely good enough for a little bit better than P12 but I still have to take the positives: we’re starting on the front row again for another sprint race.
“Now I need to maximise the points tomorrow and then make up for the mistakes I made today in the feature race on Sunday.
“Thank you to the team for giving me a car that’s good enough to be in the top 12 and I need to maximise the rest of the weekend and get points from both races.”
Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring proved difficult for much of the field, with one of the shortest laps on the calendar leaving all 30 cars fighting for track position.
Traffic management became a major factor through the session, while the threat of yellow flags was also present as drivers pushed wide over the kerbs in search of lap time.
Wharton’s 12th place means he will start Sunday’s feature race from the sixth row, leaving him with work to do if he is to add to his points haul across both races.
However, the sprint race offers a clear opportunity to continue the momentum built in Barcelona, where his victory marked his first points of the year and Prema’s first F3 win since Belgium in 2024.
The Barcelona weekend was Prema’s strongest of the 2026 season so far, with Wharton later saying the team had shown it could fight at the front when starting from a competitive position.
Prema teammate Louis Sharp endured a more difficult qualifying session, with the New Zealander ending up 20th after a DRS issue on his final push lap.
Sharp had scored his first points of the season with ninth in the Barcelona sprint race, but will have to make progress from further back in both races this weekend.
“It was a little bit of a tricky qualifying session, quite messy in the second run and hard to get a lap together,” he said.
“I feel like on my side I didn’t quite maximise things and we could have been a little bit better.
“Having the DRS issue on the last push lap hurt us as well, I think we could have been a little bit faster and probably been around that top ten if it wasn’t for that so a bit of a shame, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
“I’ve got a bit of work to do for the races starting from P20 but that’s fine. I think we’ve got really good race pace, so no need to get too disappointed.
“There’s a lot of racing to go and I’ve got to get my head down and hope for two good results.”
The Formula 3 sprint race gets underway at 10.05am local time (6.05pm AEST) on Saturday.
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