Max Verstappen stormed to pole 0.4s in front of Lewis Hamilton. Valtteri Bottas rounds out the top 3, in front of surprise midfield pairing, Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly.
Q1:
Mazepin spun early on, ruining a few early laptimes. With 10 minutes to go, almost every car came out on to track, causing a huge amount of traffic in areas. Verstappen led from Hamilton until Tsunoda jumped up into 2nd with a stunning lap.
Despite spending the majority of the session in the elimination zone, Russell managed to continue his ‘Mr Saturday’ title with a lap worthy of 7th place. Ocon and Vettel were much less lucky, however, with both being shock exits qualifying. This was due to another spin from Mazepin at turn 1, bringing out the yellow flags.
- 16th Ocon
- 17th Latifi
- 18th Vettel
- 19th Schumacher
- 20th Mazepin
Q2:
It was Hamilton’s turn to top the timesheets early in the session, with Verstappen just behind. After a significant off, Verstappen appeared to have minor damage to the floor of his car. Immediately after completing their laps, Ricciardo and Perez had their laptimes deleted for track extending. This, along with a huge track evolution led to a huge amount of pressure for certain drivers at the end of the session.,
The dying minutes of Q2 threw some incredible suprises. Shockingly, it was a Ferrari 1-2 at the end of the session, albeit with both cars wearing softer tyres. Alonso managed to drag his car to Q3 while, just behind, Stroll just scraped through in 10th place. Gasly also managed to make Q3, but impressive team-mate Tsunoda fell to 13th after a scrappy lap. However, the biggest surprise was Perez, relegated to 11th after taking a risk on the harder tyre backfired.
Hamilton and Bottas won out over Verstappen, but it was neck and neck as they went into Q3.
- 11th Perez
- 12th Giovinazzi
- 13th Tsunoda
- 14th Raikkonen
- 15th Russell
Q3:
The intial runs left Verstappen 1st, but only 0.023s from Hamilton who, in turn, was half a second in front of Gasly.
A gaggle of cars left the pits with two minutes to go, all looking for a tow from the car in front. Bottas left first, and put himself in trouble with no available slipstream. He was able to improve to 3rd, while Hamilton snatched provisional pole. But, just behind, Verstappen performed a masterclass, taking the fastest times in every sector en route to his first back-to-back pole positions.
Leclerc stormed to 4th ahead of Gasly while Ricciardo edged out Norris for 6th. Sainz was not able to match his team-mate, finishing 8th while Alonso impressed in 9th. Stroll rounded out the top 10.
- Verstappen
- Hamilton
- Bottas
- Leclerc
- Gasly
- Ricciardo
- Norris
- Sainz
- Alonso
- Stroll
F1 fans have finally seen the first hint toward an answer. Red Bull have got superb packaged and have pulled off the first, potentially devastating blow. However, there are no points awarded on a Saturday and, while he has the lead, he will have two Mercedes to ward off, without Perez to help.
Game on.
Feature Image Credit @redbullracing Official Twitter Account
