Hamilton was between the two Saubers in qualifying, and Franco Colapinto made a mistake on his final attempt, failing to repeat his surprising sprint qualifying performance. The two Williams, the only team alongside Ferrari that has no updates in this race, fell by the wayside in Q1.
Q2: RB strategy does not work
Leclerc again started the second part of qualifying with difficulty, making a mistake on his first attempt. Up front, for the first time, Lando Norris and McLaren appeared in first place, but using new tires, while rival Max Verstappen made the first attempt with used tires.
Leclerc managed to enter the top 10, while RB’s tactic of using Lawson, due to the punishment, to give his teammate Tsunoda the space was not enough for the Japanese to move on to Q3. He was eliminated along with Hulkenberg, who made a mistake on his last attempt, Stroll, Ocon and Lawson.
This meant that Magnussen went into the top 10, riding with the Haas update, which had only been in Hulkenberg’s car until then. And Fernando Alonso, after major set-up changes, also went to Q3.
Q3: Details decide pole and Russell ends up in the wall
Before the final attempts, Norris was told by his engineer not to try to drive more than the car could handle, especially in corner combinations. And he managed a lap 31 thousandths faster than Verstappen, who lost time in the last corner. Before that, he had been doing a better lap than Norris, reversing what happened in the sprint classification, when Norris was faster than Verstappen until he made a mistake in the last sector.
