Leclerc takes pole after the chaotic end of Q3

The Ferrari driver took the lead after the first rounds in Q3, but Yuki Tsunoda fell a few seconds before the end of the session – and Carlos Sainz also hit the guardrails right behind the AlphaTauri – secured Leclerc’s pole from Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

The session had already been severely disrupted and delayed by three more red flags, caused by the fall of Lance Stroll and Antonio Giovinazzi in Q1 and Daniel Ricciardo in Q2.

Leclerc’s first lap of 1: 41.218 minutes in Q3 came when he was leading the field but was crucial when he caught up with Hamilton – and did a second warm-up lap behind teammate Valtteri Bottas in the closing stages of the track. .

This gave Leclerc a 0.232 second lead over Hamilton as the Mercedes drivers completed the first of two runs in Q3, with Bottas losing the order as he towed Hamilton.

Red Bull, the favorite for pole, finished third with Verstappen as he failed to reach Leclerc in the first Q3 runs despite being towed away by team-mate Sergio Perez.

Pierre Gasly finished fourth as the AlphaTauri drivers did their first Q3 laps in the middle of the segment as the rest of the top 10 sat in the pits preparing for the final attempts that were eventually abandoned.

Tsunoda dragged Gasly around – the rookie’s lap ended well enough for P8, while Bottas slipped back to 10th place.

Along with the others, he never had a chance to improve because Tsunoda – the one after a cool-down lap in which the AlphaTauri riders mingled with the rest of the field and now preparing for their final runs – is for one The second attempt failed – the 90-degree left at the end of the back straight crashed into Turn 3 early in the first sector.

He braked too late and blocked his left front, throwing him nose first into the guardrails, with Sainz “losing focus” as he followed Tsunoda’s bridging and fell, swung the rear of the Ferrari around and the front wing was knocked off against the wall on the inside of the Turn 3 run-out area.

Behind pole sitter Hamilton, Verstappen and Gasly came Sainz, Lando Norris and Perez, while Fernando Alonso was stuck on P9 between Tsunoda and Bottas.

Norris will be investigated after qualifying for a possible first quarter warning procedure violation.

Q2 ended 90 seconds earlier after Ricciardo blocked his front left side and slid straight into the wall on the outside of Turn 3.

The McLaren’s right front was chopped off on impact and the middle segment was not restarted, meaning several drivers – including Ricciardo – were eliminated due to their initial run times.

Sebastian Vettel was vocal angry when he missed a Q3 place by 0.029 seconds when he ended up in 11th place, ahead of Esteban Ocon, who cut the wall with his right backside from the same curve, in the Ricciardo, who finished 13th .had qualified, later crashed.

Kimi Raikkonen finished in 14th place ahead of George Russell, who maintained his 100 percent progression from Q1-Q2 for Williams in 2021.

This came after he missed the first few minutes of Q1 when his team was working to switch him back to a previously used engine as the new one he drove in FP3 had a water pump leak and needed to be removed.

In Q1, the incidents between Lance Stroll and Antonio Giovinazzi meant that the opening segment lasted over 40 minutes.

Both drivers hit the wall in fast turn 15 on the left – the downhill curve at the end of the second sector in which Leclerc and Verstappen crashed in FP2 and FP3, respectively, with Stroll showing up first just three minutes after Q1.

The Aston Martin driver’s right front hit the wall almost across the wall after slipping on the incident with understeer.

The impact broke the suspension and he drove into the last real corner of the track with the red flags hoisted when only Leclerc had completed a timed lap as he had run at the bottom of the field.

After a 12-minute delay, the session started again with the Mercedes pair switching from medium to soft that the rest of the field ran, but the process only lasted another five minutes before Giovinazzi hit the wall.

The Alfa Romeo driver locked his left front and drove further into the crash barriers than Stroll, with Giovinazzi stopping immediately as the right side of his car was badly damaged.

The red flags returned with the Mercedes drivers who had not yet had to set a time, although Hamilton eventually drove his used softs to the fastest time in the first segment.

When Q1 finally ended, Nicholas Latifi and the Haas duo were eliminated, with Mick Schumacher leading Nikita Mazepin, who had to hit the escape route at Turn 4 on his final flying lap – where he ran just ahead of Hamilton.