Hamilton beats Perez, Verstappen on pole

Hamilton was able to maintain his 99th career pole, although he had not improved on his last flight lap. His Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas qualified eighth, one place ahead of Lando Norris, who lost a time that would have put him in third due to a stretch limited the injury.

Both Mercedes cars and Verstappen will start the race on the advantageous medium tires after successfully surviving the second quarter with the yellow-walled rubber, which offers significantly better durability compared to the softs.

Hamilton was in the lead with 1: 14.411 minutes after the first runs in the third quarter, but could not make up for the time lost in the first sector on his second attempt.

This meant he didn’t improve the pole benchmark despite having the fastest time in the final sector, but since his rivals weren’t improving enough, he held on to take his first pole of the 2021 season.

Perez overtook Verstappen in his second Red Bull event, finishing just 0.1 seconds behind Hamilton’s fastest time. But the Mexican driver had to use the softs to get through the second quarter and faces a tougher opening stint when the race starts tomorrow in dry conditions.

Verstappen was arguably the pole favorite after beating FP3 after his disrupted run on Friday, and although he set a personal best on his final Q3 lap – including the fastest time in the middle sector – he ended up 0.087 seconds behind him.

Charles Leclerc put his Ferrari in fourth place ahead of McLaren’s Pierre Gasly and Daniel Ricciardo. The trio started ahead of Norris, who had apparently secured a top 3 result.

But Norris’ 1: 14.454 minutes was cleared as he was judged to have gone too far after the Piratella turn in the middle sector and his final time ended as his first run in the third quarter.

That was still enough to keep him ahead of Bottas, whose personal best in the third quarter fell far short of typical Mercedes placements.

Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll rounded off the top 10.

In the second quarter, Carlos Sainz’s first race in Italy as a Ferrari driver started from outside the top 10, as he was eliminated at the end of the second quarter and ended up in 11th place despite setting a personal best on his last lap.

Failing to find enough time, Sainz meant Stroll was coming into the third quarter for Aston Martin. The green cars raced ahead of the rest of the field as the middle segment of the session ended.

George Russell finished P12, which shuffled Sebastian Vettel back to P13 and ensured Russell maintained his perfect qualifying record against Williams teammates – when Nicholas Latifi qualified 14th after an impressive first quarter.

Fernando Alonso was another driver to set a personal best at the end of the second quarter, but that wasn’t enough to lift him from 15th place in the final standings.

In the first quarter, Russell’s final lap improvement made it to ensure that both Williams cars made it through the second quarter for the first time since the Hungarian GP last year, against Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen, who also set a personal best for his last performance , but didn’t find enough time to make it to the second part of qualifying.

Behind Raikkonen stood his team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi. The Haas duo were saved from the bottom by Yuki Tsunoda’s absence until the end of the session.

Tsunoda’s Q1 was over after only a few minutes when he crashed heavily on his first flight lap at the Alta variant.

The Japanese driver lost the rear of his AlphaTauri between the two vertices of the chicane, with the car swirling around quickly and backing up into the barriers.

After the rear wing and both rear wheels were smashed and debris lay on the drain area, the session was quickly highlighted in red, followed by a delay of nearly 10 minutes in the incident being resolved.