Lando Norris pinched pole position from Max Verstappen after a high-speed George Russell crash truncated qualifying before the final laps could be completed.
Russell’s crash compounded a woeful afternoon for Mercedes, coming after three-time Austin polesitter Lewis Hamilton was eliminated from Q1 in 19th.
Verstappen had topped all three qualifying segments on his way to what looked likely to be a largely straightforward pole before a peach of a lap from title challenger Norris put the McLaren car on provisional pole by 0.031s. It was the most convincing lap the Briton has strung together all weekend, having lamented his modestly upgraded McLaren hasn’t had the pace to match Verstappen or the Ferrari drivers this weekend.
Verstappen was first of the pair to return to the track for the final runs of the hour and blitzed the first split, setting a purple time to put himself 0.172s ahead. Norris, meanwhile, couldn’t improve on his own time at the first interval.
The duel was interrupted by Russell, who lost control of his car high speed at Turn 19 and spun into the barriers. With both Verstappen and Norris behind him on the track, both drivers were forced to abandon their laps, allowing Norris to claim an unexpected pole.
It’s the Briton’s fifth pole from the last seven grands prix and keeps his slim title hopes alive, now trailing Verstappen by 54 points after the morning’s sprint race.
“It was a beautiful lap,” he said. “We’ve been on the back foot pretty much all weekend. I had to do something, and today I did that.
“I was not going to go much quicker than what I did — when you just do a lap and think, ‘It’s going to be tough to beat that.’
“I put everything out on the line. It’s what we needed to do.”
Verstappen rued a mistake at Turn 19 on his first lap that left him needing his second lap to take pole but was nonetheless pleased by his updated car’s performance.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the lap, otherwise we had a really good shot,” he said. “We’re on the front row at least, and we had the potential to be first, so that’s very good.
“It seemed that we were competitive, so we made some minor changes on the car, which felt nice. … I hope that will also be positive for tomorrow.”
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Carlos Sainz also had a shot at pole scuppered, having been on a much better second lap after an unconvincing first run, fractionally up on Norris’s time in the first sector and less than 0.1s down in the second before Russell’s crash.
The Spaniard qualified fifth for the sprint but finished the short race a punchy second and believes third on the grid would give him the chance to improve that result in the grand prix.
“That was the target, to do a step in qualifying compared to yesterday,” he said. “Yesterday we were P5, today we are P3, so we’ve done a good step in the right direction.
“I think we’ve done some good progress. We should be in the fight tomorrow.”
His teammate, Charles Leclerc, qualified fourth ahead of Oscar Piastri and the crashed-out Russell.
Pierre Gasly had an impressive session to qualify seventh ahead of Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen. Sergio Perez will start 10th after having his first lap deleted for exceeding track limits, though the time would have been good enough for only eighth, having been 0.9s slower than his teammate’s front-row effort.
Yuki Tsunoda will start 11th, missing out on Q1 by just 0.045s.
Nico Hulkenberg, having qualified sixth for the sprint, managed just 12th for the grand prix after locking up into the first corner and spoiling his lap. Esteban Ocon will line up 13th ahead of Lance Stroll in 14th, both drivers shaded by more than 0.3s by their Q3-bound teammates.
Liam Lawson qualified 15th on his first full-time grand prix weekend without a time in Q2, having carried a back-of-grid engine penalty into the session. The Kiwi was impressively quicker than teammate Tsunoda in Q1 and was deployed to give the sister car a slipstream in Q2 before returning to his garage.
Williams teammates Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto, eliminated in Q1, will therefore line up 15th and 16th ahead of Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas in 17th.
Hamilton will start 18th in comfortably his worst qualifying result at COTA.
The Mercedes driver, having never qualified lower than fifth at the Circuit of The Americas, was only 0.121s short of a spot in Q2 but a massive 0.618s slower than teammate Russell and 1.108s off top spot in the opening qualifying stanza.
The damage was almost all done in the middle sector, where he lost half a second to the frontrunners running wide at Turn 12.
Zhou Guanyu will start 19th for Sauber ahead of the penalized Lawson.
