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A "spicy" sprint on Red Bull's home turf sets up a fascinating Sunday.
Patrick Iversen, Alex Davies and more
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McLaren lodge formal complaint challenging qualifying results
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McLaren met with the stewards last hour regarding Oscar Piastri's track limits time deletion in Q3. The McLaren driver lost his lap for running too wide at Turn 6, which dropped him to P7 for tomorrow's grand prix.
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Close one, mate
Here's the track limits violation that cost Piastri a P3-worthy lap time. He'll start P7 tomorrow.
An intriguing data point from the sprint race
Maybe not so much intriguing as mystifying, because there's really not much of a pattern here, or a correlation to who lapped fastest. A healthy reminder that this sport isn't about flat out speed.
"Not amazing"
That's Norris on his P2 qualification, but it seems you can hear in his voice the distance between McLaren and the lead Red Bull right now. "They were a lot quicker than what we could achieve today."
Indeed, Verstappen was more than half a second ahead, on one of the sport's shortest tracks.
A mighty pole lap from Max Verstappen
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Sheesh, I did not see that coming. A really impressive lap from Max Verstappen to blow the opposition out of the water. Four-tenths of a second around such a short track is a huge margin, and not one I thought possible given the fine margins in sprint qualifying yesterday and the sprint race earlier.
It shows how under the new format, where teams can make tweaks to the car setups between the sprint race and qualifying, there's a chance for improvements between sessions. Red Bull remedied all the elements - minor, of course - that left Verstappen maybe not feeling totally at ease earlier today, and we saw the result. Huge, huge performance.
"The qualifying went really well," he said afterward.
Yup, that's pole for Verstappen
The provisional order:
- Max Verstappen
- Lando Norris
- George Russell
- Carlos Sainz
- Lewis Hamilton
- Charles Leclerc
- Oscar Piastri
- Sergio Pérez
- Nico Hülkenberg
- Esteban Ocon
- Daniel Ricciardo
- Kevin Magnussen
- Pierre Gasly
- Yuki Tsunoda
- Fernando Alonso
- Alex Albon
- Lance Stroll
- Valtteri Bottas
- Logan Sargeant
- Zhou Guanyu
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Dr. Slow and Mr. Fast
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Max Verstappen: PIT EXIT INCIDENT INVOLVING CAR 1 (VER) NOTED - DRIVING UNNECESSARILY SLOWLY
Max Verstappen: 1:04.314 lap time, nearly half a second faster than anyone.
Verstappen leads the field back out
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As if anybody's going to match that time.
Still, it'd be his first pole since Imola in mid-May, so he won't want to let it slip away.
Stewards note Hamilton for unsafe release
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Well yeah, he dragged a jack with him as he pulled out of the garage. No threat to anybody, though.
Provisional pole for Max Verstappen
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A mighty, mighty lap from Max Verstappen, putting down a serious marker for anyone to try to catch. He was six-tenths clear when he went P1, only for laps from Norris and Russell to reduce that gap. He's still three-tenths ahead of Norris.
Verstappen asks on the radio for a small tweak on the setup after reporting a little bit of understeer through Turn 6. Minor but important details.
Verstappen just keeps getting faster
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1:04.426, yeesh!
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My gosh
Yowza.
Verstappen the overwhelming favorite for pole in Q3
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Boy is Max Verstappen cooking with gas right now. Over half a second clear of the field in Q2, which around such a short lap is a lifetime. This could well be a race for P2.
Ricciardo narrowly missing out on a Q3 berth
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You can hear on the radio just how frustrated Daniel Ricciardo is to have missed out on Q3. He's P11, 0.015s shy of Esteban Ocon. That's only the third time this season he has outqualified Yuki Tsunoda, who is down in 14th, but still not quite what Ricciardo wanted. At a time when his future is being questioned, he really needs to get in the fight for points tomorrow.
Déjà vu from Max
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He managed this feat twice:
Best Sectors
S1: Max VERSTAPPEN 16.262
S2: Max VERSTAPPEN 28.852
S3: Max VERSTAPPEN 19.355
Combined Fastest Sectors: Max VERSTAPPEN 1:04.469
Fastest Lap: Max VERSTAPPEN 1:04.469
Q2 drops
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That's Q2 wrapped. We lose Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Kevin Magnussen, Yuki Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso.
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Final pushes starting
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Checo's the first one out with just over three minutes left in the session.
Max puts it all together
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Best Sectors:
S1: Max VERSTAPPEN 16.266
S2: Max VERSTAPPEN 28.931
S3: Max VERSTAPPEN 19.380
Combined Fastest Sectors: Max VERSTAPPEN 1:04.577
Fastest Lap: Max VERSTAPPEN 1:04.577
Trading places
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After getting out right away, the Ferraris and Alpines are back in, while everyone else comes out. Pti lane's looking crowded as drivers queue for their place.
And we're back
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Q2 underway, 15 minutes on the clock. Feels leisurely compared to yesterday's sprint quali!
Ferrari and Alpine are the first four on the track.
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