George Russell took his third pole position of the season ahead of Carlos Sainz and a super Pierre Gasly in a delayed conclusion to qualifying after a heavy crash by Williams rookie Franco Colapinto.
Colapinto’s big crash exiting the final chicane scattered debris across the circuit and damaged the concrete barriers at the exit of Turn 16, forcing a more-than 20-minute delay to the start of Q3.
By then the track temperature had dropped to 57 degrees F, and grip was harder to come by. Russell took provisional pole ahead of Sainz with his first flying lap almost 0.3s slower than the fastest time of Q2 set nearly half an hour earlier.
The two drivers split their strategies to tackle the cooler track temperature. Sainz was sent onto the track with enough time to complete two warm-up laps ahead of his final attempt, while Russell insisted on being last on track, exiting pit lane at the tail of the 10 contenders. The Briton also had a new front wing, having glanced the barriers on his first lap at Turn 5.
With extra heat in his tires, Sainz found more than 0.6s to snatch provisional pole, but Russell’s sweetly balanced Mercedes was just fine without the extra preparation, lowering the benchmark to 1m32.312s to pinch top spot by 0.098s.
“It feels incredible to be back on pole,” he said. “I’m just so happy.
“We’ve been so quick all weekend, and I just knew coming into that last Q3 lap it was going to be the one that counts. We’ve got to do a deep dive to understand way we’ve been so quick this weekend, because it’s been a real surprise.”
Sainz was surprised to be so close to pole in the cold conditions and said it boded well for his victory chances.
“It was a tight quali,” he said. I’m a bit closer to pole than what I was expecting, really.
“We need to stay confident that tomorrow we can be fighting at the front eve more than today, so if today we were close in quali, tomorrow we might have the chance of going for the win. That will be the target.”
Gasly was a sensational third for Alpine, eclipsing his team’s best qualifying result of fourth from the previous race in Brazil and comfortably bettering his personal benchmark of seventh in Barcelona and Austin. The Frenchman improved by more than a second with his last flying lap to get within 0.352s of pole.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “Honestly, we didn’t think we’d be able to achieve a top three in quali. It was an incredible lap, especially around this track.
“I knew crossing the line it would be a good lap, but when they came over the radio and told me we’re lining up third tomorrow, it was amazing.”
Charles Leclerc was fourth after fumbling his first lap with a moment of understeer through Turn 7. He ended the session 0.471s slower than Russell.
Max Verstappen will line up fifth after lapping 0.485s off the pace, a recovery from his poor Thursday practice times but without hauling himself into contention for pole.
The best McLaren could manage was sixth with Lando Norris, who was 0.696s off the pace. Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri, who was eighth and 0.025s further back, were second and first on the road to set their ultimate lap times, potentially leaving them missing out on some track evolution.
Yuki Tsunoda split the papaya cars in seventh for RB, while Nico Hulkenberg qualified ninth for Haas.
Lewis Hamilton completed the top 10 after a nightmare qualifying session, locking up at Turn 12 on his first flying lap and suffering a big snap of oversteer in the first sector on his final lap, leaving him without a representative time.
Esteban Ocon qualified 11th ahead of Kevin Magnussen and Zhou Guanyu, the Chinese driver making just his third appearance outside the bottom five for the season.
Colapinto was 14th fastest but ended Q2 in a heap at the exit of Turn 16. The Argentine clipped the apex barrier at the left-handed, snapping his front-left suspension and sending his Williams smacking into the concrete barrier on the right-hand side of the track.
The rookie stepped out unscathed, though his car was heavily damaged, with three corners broken along with both wings and much of the bodywork. It was his second consecutive qualifying crash and the six major smash for Williams from the last three events, dating back to the Mexico City Grand Prix last month.
Williams worked heroically to complete repairs to both cars in time to fly to Las Vegas but is carrying fewer spares than it normally would have, given the cost cap and the need to focus on next year’s car.
Liam Lawson qualified 15th after abandoning his final flying lap shortly before Colapinto’s red flag.
Sergio Perez will start 16th, his fourth bottom-10 qualification in the last five grands prix. It is his sixth Q1 knockout this season and his second in the last three grands prix.
Fernando Alonso qualified 17th ahead of Alex Albon and Valtteri Bottas, though the Finn will be demoted to the back of the grid with a penalty for taking an unscheduled energy store change.
Lance Stroll will therefore start 19th after having time to set just one flying lap at the very end of the session. The Canadian had been held in his garage for almost the entire session while mechanics rushed to change his energy recovery system, which had failed in the final minutes of FP3.
