Oscar Piastri beat teammate Lando Norris to first place on the grid for the Sprint at the Qatar Grand Prix as both drivers beat Max Verstappen on outright pace.
It was a delayed start to the session as a result of the track limits changes that had been imposed to try and negate concerns over tire safety, with Turn 12 and Turn 13 tightened on the exit curbs by 80cm. That led to a 10-minute familiarization session before SQ1 got underway 20 minutes after it was originally intended to, but still didn’t avoid multiple lap times being deleted.
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Verstappen had his best time erased in SQ3 but it ultimately wouldn’t have changed his third place starting position, with Lando Norris also failing to improve on his second lap when going wide at the final corner. The meant Piastri’s time of a 1m24.454 led the way, with Norris second on a 1m24.536.
“Very, very happy,” Piastri said. “I might give the FIA five minutes to make sure I’m actually on pole! But as long as that’s OK, I’m very, very happy. It was a pretty good lap, I saw Lando on the big screen, he made a mistake in the last corner, I don’t know how his lap was looking like, but I’m very, very happy.
“Obviously Max is only starting third, he’s not a million miles away, but we’ll try our best. Obviously it’s a bit of a question mark on tires. We’ll try our best and see what we can pull off.”
Sergio Perez will start eighth which means the result still leaves Verstappen poised to be crowned drivers’ champion for a third time as he only needs a top-six finish in the Sprint regardless of Perez’s result, while Perez can only have any chance of delaying the title confirmation to Sunday if he finishes in the top three.
Alongside Verstappen will be George Russell, with an all-Ferrari third row for the Sprint after Fernando Alonso had his final lap deleted, dropping him from fifth to ninth on the grid. Nico Hulkenebrg starts ahead of Perez, while Esteban Ocon rounds out the top ten after seeing his only time of SQ3 invalidated too.
There was a shock elimination in SQ2 as Lewis Hamilton also fell foul of track limits – this time at Turn 5 where no changes had been made – and ending up 12th on the Sprint grid, one spot behind Pierre Gasly. Valtteri Bottas, Liam Lawson and Zhou Guanyu also were eliminated at the second stage, with Lawson going too far wide at the penultimate corner and admitting: “Yeah I f****d up, sorry. My bad guys.”
Of the five drivers to be eliminated in SQ1, four of them lost their final attempts to track limits violations, with only Lance Stroll in 16th retaining his time. Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, Kevin Magnussen and Logan Sargeant joined the Canadian in dropping out, with Sargeant losing each of his timed laps and not setting a time within 107% but being permitted to race given his previous lap times in practice and Friday’s qualifying session.
Albon was cited for twice going off on his best lap – at Turn 5 and Turn 13 – while it was the modified Turn 13 that proved costly for the other three.