Sprint qualifying continued on Friday's programme for the Brazilian Grand Prix with Oscar Piastri emerging as the big winner.
The first laps of SQ1 were interesting and even then one could suspect that this stage would bring some serious fireworks: on an ever-improving track Liam Lawson took the lead, followed by Oscar Piastri, and finally Lando Norris finished the stage ahead of his teammate and Alexander Albon. Among those eliminated were two Aston Martins, Yuki Tsunoda, Guanyu Zhou and Esteban Ocon.
In SQ2 Norris came out on top again, followed by Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen, there was no doubt about the top three. However, almost anything could happen behind them, anything could happen. Who would have thought that Oliver Bearman, who replaced Kevin Magnussen due to illness, would easily move on to SQ3? On the other hand, when Sergio Perez said goodbye, we were no longer surprised, a much bigger shock was the elimination of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Hülkenberg - because both had teammates who moved on - next to them Franco Collapinto and Valtteri Bottas could not continue the struggle.
In the final phase of the sprint qualifying, the competition was already taking place on soft tyres, and the forces were reversed: Oscar Piastri was fastest, ahead of Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc, and he will start from pole in the sprint race of the Brazilian Grand Prix.
