Max Verstappen has taken one again pole after the Austrian GP and will start from first position in this Sunday’s race at the Qatar GP, the penultimate round of the Formula 1 World Championship. Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso will come out, respectively, from the seventh place and eighth place on the grid.
After his eighth position in the Sprint held hours before at this Losail International Circuit, Verstappen led Q3 with his best time of 1:20.520, ahead of the British George Russell and Lando Norris.
Thus, Q1 showed the plan among the teams to install used tires to test the asphalt in the first laps and then opt for new wheels. Almost everyone went with that strategy with softexcept for a Russell who preferred medium tires to squeeze out his car.
The King’s Lynn native did well, as he led first with a time of 1:21.519 and then with 1:21.241, with Alonso rushing his used wheels to stay in the ‘top 15’ and avoid a cut that did affect Alexander Albon, Liam Lawson, Nico Hülkenberg, Franco Colapinto and Esteban Ocon.
During Q2, Russell returned to the top of the timesheets with his early 1:21.084, one thousandth faster than Verstappen. But Norris’s 1:20.983 and later ‘Mad Max”s 1:20.687 raised the bar, as did the Ferrari driven by the Monegasque Charles Leclerc thanks to its ‘time’ of 1:21,000.
Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda, and Lance Stroll did not pass the screening; meanwhile, Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso They had accessed Q3 with relative ease.
To begin that third and final round, Leclerc attacked with a record of 1:20.885, although Russell quickly achieved 1:20.575 on his first lap. Verstappen was 0.045 behind the Englishman, but the Dutchman still had another lap in store and he took advantage of it with the clock at zero to take the pole like a four-time champion.