Max Verstappen secured pole position for the sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix in an immensely close wet/dry session that saw the top three covered by 0.025s.
With just eight minutes for SQ3 and all drivers on slicks but a damp track, the quickest approach was to do two timed laps with one cooldown in between, and Red Bull timed it perfectly with Verstappen starting his final attempt with two seconds left on the clock. He made the best of the conditions to deny Oscar Piastri a maiden P1 start, pipping the McLaren rookie by just 0.011s.
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Piastri himself had only edged out Carlos Sainz by 0.025s, with Charles Leclerc close behind his Ferrari team-mate in fourth. Lando Norris will start fifth ahead of Pierre Gasly, as Lewis Hamilton slipped from first after the opening laps to seventh due to having teammate George Russell directly ahead of him on the final run.
Russell gave up his lap to allow Hamilton the inside line into Les Combes, leaving him 10th behind Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon.
There was a 35-minute delay before proceedings could get underway after a torrential downpour for an hour in the build-up to the session. The rain eased by the time the session was due to start but the circuit needed to improve and was cleared with track blowers before it was allowed to begin.
The 12-minute first segment led to Haas making a strategic error as Nico Hulkenberg — without a time to his name — failed to start his final attempt before the checkered flag. Missing out by under two seconds, Hulkenberg was eliminated in 20th place. He was joined by teammate Kevin Magnussen in 18th — Zhou Guanyu between them — and the other Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was how close Russell came to dropping out at this point, squeezing through in 15th place by under 0.1s after locking up and going off at Les Combes, with Yuki Tsunoda the unlucky driver in P16 who failed to advance.
SQ2 put drivers in a tough position as the sunshine was ensuring the track would dry out, but not quite quickly enough. In the end the only driver to gamble on slick tires was Lance Stroll, who was on mediums and complained to his team that it was too early to do so on his out lap, but with no time left he still attempted a lap.
The first sector was good and Stroll was committed through Eau Rouge and Raidillon but when he reached the middle sector there was no dry line and Stroll slid off the road at Turn 9 and into the barrier to bring out the red flag. The right-front corner of the car was heavily damaged and will need the 4.5 hours before the sprint to repair, while the incident also stopped teammate Fernando Alonso setting a lap time and eliminated him in 15th behind Stroll.
The other three left to rue Stroll’s incident — as it ended the session prematurely — were Daniel Ricciardo in 11th ahead of the Williams pair of Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant. Ricciardo was the last of the drivers to actually set a time, with Albon leaving his one run late and Sargeant spinning on his first attempt.
The delayed start has also pushed the start time of the sprint back to 5:05pm local time (11:05am ET).
