A wild P3, Q1 and Q2 on a slightly wet racetrack ended with a louder Q3 at the Turkish Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton qualified in pole position but will start the race in eleventh after the Mercedes team installed a new internal combustion engine in its power unit and suffered a 10-place penalty.
The change came when Mercedes worried that the ICE would result in a failure of reliability, the last thing a driver needs in a close championship battle. Mercedes decided not to give Hamilton a completely new engine, as it would have meant starting at the very back, as will be the case with Carlos Sainz.
Sainz was quick all weekend, but what could have been fighting for a podium will likely turn into a rally for points.
With Hamilton’s penalty, Valterri Bottas starts the race from pole. With Hamilton possibly out of the race this weekend, Bottas will try to win straight away and keep Max Verstappen behind. Verstappen couldn’t finish third in qualifying.
Charles Leclerc qualified fourth and is in a good position to potentially take his second podium of the season. Ferrari was strong that weekend, with Leclerc finishing third, second and fifth on P1, P2 and P3.
AlphaTauri had a great Saturday. Pierre Gasly finished fifth after being fastest in P3 earlier in the day in the wet.
Yuki Tsunoda made it into Q3 for the first time since the second race in Austria and qualified in tenth place. In the meantime it was a bit up and down for midfield rival Alpine as Fernando Alonso qualified in sixth, but Esteban Ocon did not make it into Q3 and will start the race in twelfth place.
Sergio Perez qualified for seventh place and will almost certainly be the gatekeeper for Hamilton during the race. It was a bad weekend for McLaren as they struggled to find speed on Friday and Saturday. Lando Norris was able to secure eighth place in qualifying, but Daniel Ricciardo didn’t even get out of Q1 and will start deep in the field. Lance Stroll meanwhile qualified for ninth place.
Turn one was a very sketchy point in qualifying as there were several spin-outs or brake blocks in the marbles. In all three qualifying sessions, however, no cars were damaged in the runoff election. As the track dried out from a slightly rainy Q1 and a wet P3, the last corner became more of a problem point where some teams ran away. There were no incidents in the third quarter.
The teams mainly opted for mediums in Q2, with the track being mostly dry outside of some wet spots. Perez was a victim of turn one in Q2, but the runoff allowed the special, all-white Red Bull machine to continue. Leclarc spun at the exit of the final corner on his first hot lap while George Russell qualified 13th after running away on his final hot lap. Sainz qualified 15th after he never came out, while Mick Schumacher (14th), Ocon (12th) and Sebastian Vettel (11th) together with Russell in 2nd Stroll held a top 10 position, although he slid into the first corner on his last lap of the session.
Q1 started as an absolute misstep, as the teams predicted that it could rain any minute and therefore had to get out early and drive as dry a lap as possible. With this in mind, the rain began to evaporate towards the end of the session and track conditions never fell below slippery tire conditions.
Yuki Tsunoda turned into the first corner on his hot lap. Tsunoda was able to continue unharmed. Nikita Mazepin also spun in turn one, but was also undamaged. Mazepin (20th), Kimi Räikkönen (19th), Antonio Giovinazzi (18th), Nicholas Latifi (17th) and Ricciardo (16th) were all out in Q1.
In non-qualifying news this week, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali told Sports Business Daily that F1 was watching a possible third race in the United States, with the publication reporting it would be a street race on the Las Vegas Strip.
While Vegas would make a fun setting for a Grand Prix, could it perhaps saturate the market with the Mexican Grand Prix and the United States Grand Prix so close together? Then, if you include the Canadian Grand Prix and Miami Grand Prix, that could really burn this suddenly huge market for F1 for years to come.
Andretti Autosport is reportedly buying 80 percent of Sauber Motorsport for $ 400 million. Sauber, the parent company of the Alfa Romeo F1 team, has claimed an F1 victory over the last 28 years of competition. From 2019, Alfa Romeo took over the title sponsorship of the F1 team, which was very close to the Ferrari driver and equipment until the next year, when Valtari Bottas joined the racing team. Andretti denied the story to the press.
Michael Andretti, the head of the team, would seek revenge in Formula 1 after being largely embarrassed in his only season as a driver in the series in 1993.
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