Hamilton will start after the one-hour qualifying ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, which is divided into three segments and five cars each retired in Q1 and Q2 before the top 10 shootout of Q3.
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What happened in the first quarter?
In the first session, when all the cars were on the track together, Lance Stroll set the early pace for Aston Martin at 6/16:082, but it was an early pace for Yuki Tsunoda, who was backing his AlphaTauri into the Tyrewall at Variant Alta red flag required.
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The session restarted with 12 minutes remaining, with 15 cars still untimed. Verstappen took the lead with 1: 15.109 minutes, but Bottas dived into the 1: 14 bracket on his second push lap with 1: 14.926 seconds and then 1: 14.672 minutes.
The Alfa Romeos of Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi as well as the Haas duo of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin and the withdrawn Tsuonda fell at the first hurdle.
What happened in the second quarter?
In the second quarter, the protagonists of the pole position hunt ran on the middle tire – since every car starts with the rubber used in this session. In the first few runs, Hamilton set the benchmark at 1: 14.817 minutes, 0.067 seconds faster than Verstappen.
McLaren’s Lando Norris walked straight to the softs and zoomed straight up in 1: 14.718 seconds. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez ran on a second set of softs and produced 1: 14.716 minutes to end the session in P1.
At this point, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, whose scruffy last lap cost him a place in the third quarter, was eliminated by George Russell (Williams), Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin), Nicholas Latifi (Williams) and Fernando Alonso (Alpine).
What happened in the third quarter?
In the top 10 shootouts, Hamilton set the bar at 1: 14.411 minutes, 0.091 seconds ahead of Verstappen – who had a bad first sector but was fastest in the other two. Perez finished third after his first run, a quarter of a second behind the pace, and Bottas finished sixth – behind Norris and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc – after a major slip at the Tamburello chicane.
In recent runs, Hamilton just failed to improve while Norris lit up the timing screens with a fantastic lap that put him in second place 0.043 seconds behind Hamilton – but lost time because he exceeded the track restrictions.
Perez then moved into second place, 0.035 seconds behind pole, while Verstappen only finished third – 0.087 seconds slower than the fastest time after hitting the grass and leaving Tamburello. Leclerc was fourth ahead of Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri), Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren), the unfortunate Norris, the surprisingly late Bottas (who was on pole here last year), Esteban Ocon (Alpine) and Stroll.
