After Saturday's unacceptable comedy, qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix was made up today, with Lando Norris taking pole.
In Q1, which was postponed until the following day, the team encountered almost identical conditions to the previous day. As a result, the first part was a cautious settling-in period, with many skids and accidents. Franco Collapinto was the victim of his first accident, hitting the wall, which resulted in a short red flag. The conditions were best read by Max Verstappen, Alexander Albon and George Russell, while the aforementioned Collapinto, Lewis Hamilton, Oliver Bearman, Nico Hülkenberg and Zhou Guanyu were among those eliminated.
We had barely reached the halfway point of Q2 when Carlos Sainz repeated Franco Colapinto’s feat, hitting the wall almost where his Argentine teammate had hit. Another red flag came out… At that point Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Lance Stroll took the lead, but you could have guessed that with the medium tyres fitted, that wouldn’t be the final order. Shortly after Stroll was eliminated, a flurry of red flags followed one after another. Alongside him, Valtteri Bottas, the two Red Bulls, Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly all went out as the section wasn’t restarted despite the time remaining. All of this played into the hands of McLaren, and especially Norris…
Q3 was total chaos, first Alonso crashed, then Albon crashed his Williams, and eventually only seven drivers remained in the top 10. The last few clean minutes of qualifying saw steady improvements, with the fastest three being Lando Norris, George Russell and Yuki Tsunoda.
