Despite his shunt, which ended qualifying prematurely, Leclerc qualified after the one-hour qualifying, which is divided into three segments and five cars each retired in Q1 and Q2, ahead of Max Verstappen from Red Bull and Valtteri Bottas from Mercedes in front of the top 10 -Shootout of Q3.
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What happened in the first quarter?
Mick Schumacher was missing in the first session, whose Haas F1 team was unable to repair the car in time after his major shunt in Casino Square in Free Practice 3, although he is allowed to start the race.
Bottas produced the first meaningful P1 time at 1: 11.794 minutes, which was soon dwarfed by Verstappen’s 1: 11.552 seconds and then Sainz’s 1: 11.341 seconds. McLaren’s Lando Norris briefly took first place with 1: 11.321 minutes before Verstappen produced 1: 11.124 minutes.
Bottas was the first man to fall below the 1:11 mark and drove in 1: 10.938 minutes. This was the fastest time of the session, 0.175 seconds faster than Leclerc, and Verstappen was just behind in third place. World champion Lewis Hamilton was only seventh in his Mercedes.
At the first hurdle, only the four cars fell due to Schumacher’s absence: Yuki Tsunoda from AlphaTauri (missing Q2 by 0.018 seconds), Fernando Alonso from Alpine, Nicholas Latifi (who did well given his heavy FP3 crash) and the second Haas by Nikita Mazepin.
What happened in the second quarter?
In the second quarter, the protagonists of the pole position hunt avoided the usual practice of driving medium-weight tires – all drivers stuck to the softs.
Verstappen first went ahead in 1: 11.040 minutes, which Leclerc narrowly made in 1: 11.037 minutes before Sainz lowered the bar to 1: 10.806 seconds. In his second round of push, Verstappen produced a barrier shave of 1: 10.650 minutes to regain the top spot.
Leclerc took P1 back with a late lap of 1: 10.597 seconds, 0.053 seconds faster than Verstappen, who couldn’t improve his last run. Bottas drove faster on his last lap and lost his pace in third place within a tenth. Again Hamilton was only 7th in this session, but was almost two tenths closer to the fastest time than in the first quarter.
At this point, Esteban Ocon from Alpine, Daniel Ricciardo from McLaren, Lance Stroll from Aston Martin, Kimi Räikkönen (Alfa Romeo) and George Russell (Williams) were eliminated.
What happened in the third quarter?
In the top 10 shootouts, Verstappen set the bar at 1:10: 576 seconds, 0.06 seconds faster than Bottas. Leclerc beat P1 with a lap time of 1: 10.3456 seconds, 0.23 seconds faster than Verstappen.
Sainz went to P3 on 1m10.611s but was stolen by Bottas, who did a second push lap on 1m10.601s, Norris in fifth place.
In the last few runs, Verstappen made a mistake in Portier on his first lap and had to stop. He had achieved his fastest time on his last lap when the police officer Leclerc wrestled hard at the exit of the swimming pool, highlighted the red flags and dashed Verstappen’s hopes for pole position.
Bottas stayed third in front of Sainz, Norris, Pierre Gasly from AlphaTauri, Hamilton (who overcame the barrier when approaching the porter), Sebastian Vettel from Aston Martin, Sergio Perez (whose Red Bull cut the wall at the swimming pool) and Antonio Giovinazzi ( Alfa Romeo).
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