Mercedes driver George Russell took pole position in dominant fashion, clearly faster than anybody else throughout each part of qualifying. His Mercedes teammate as a bumpy ride but made it to second with Isack Hadjar holding up the Red Bull flag after Verstappen suffered a car issue.
The first qualifying session of the season is typically the first time when all cars go full power after some have definitely tried to hide their real form in pre-season testing and practice sessions earlier today and on Friday.
Kicking off the session was the Audi of Nico Hulkenberg, the team making a grand entry to the sport with a completely new power unit for the first time ever. As most slowly settled in with introductory laps, Ferrari gradually emerged to the front while Lando Norris clearly struggled with car balance.
6 minutes into the session, Bortoleto set the best laptime in the other Audi, only to be beaten soon by Piastri with rookie Arvid Lindblad also soon following that up with a sold lap into 3rd.
Another three minutes later Russell was out on track, confirming the pace everybody thought Mercedes have in hand. The Briton set a lap still nearly a second slower than what he did in FP3 but still 6 tenths ahead of the best so far. Leclerc followed that up to go second fastest on medium tyres before it was time to watch Max Verstappen who only emerged out on track with 9 minutes remaining.
When Verstappen started his first flying lap things went wrong quickly with the rears locking as soon as he started braking for Turn 1. It was an immediate end to his qualifying when he flew over the gravel and into the barriers. The car only had little damage but Verstappen did seem to have hurt his hands a bit.
The result was a stoppage of around 10 minutes, a welcome extension to the deadline for Antonelli’s Mercedes crew as they were still feverishly working to get his car fixed after the Italian’s heavy shunt in FP3.
When the session restarted, Antonelli was immediately on track and right away on the pace, setting third and eventually finishing the session in 6th fastest, easily enough to make it through. Hamilton also briefly went fastest only for Russell to soon take that place back, much to the smirkey joy of Team Principal Toto Wolff. It sure was difficult to hide his content with that effort.
At Aston Martin meanwhile the team chose to only run Alonso, limited by their 2 working batteries they got supplied by Honda. The team had been very downbeat over the past weeks since discovering the power unit has such vibration problems, but in qualifying, Alonso actually came really close to making it through into Q2, pipped out in the last moment by Franco Colapinto. Still, it was a shimmer of light to be faster than the two Cadillacs and of course ahead of Verstappen and Sainz, the latter stuck in the garage due to a car issue that Williams could not fix in time.
Q2 kicked off with McLaren and Ferrari taking the spotlights. Piastri for going fastest, the Ferraris for struggling to find good laps. In fact Hamilton started several flying laps but never finished them, returning to the pits 4 laps in with a best lap 23 seconds off Piastri.
When Mercedes emerged, Russell beat Piastri by more than half a second, all of that difference mainly made in the final sector, underlining how the Mercedes has more battery power left towards the end of the lap. Antonelli also had a solid lap on his first effort, immediately going third fastest. Hadjar for Red Bull slotted into 4th.
Ferrari did get things sorted in time with a fresh set of softs enabling both drivers to do good enough to make it through to Q3. Leclerc finally got a full good lap together to take second, settling in between the leading Mercedes duo. Lewis Hamilton had bit more more trouble and ended up 8th.
Gabriel Bortoleto also made it through on performance with the 10th best effort but upon return to the pits he ground to a halt on the pit entry, before making it to the white line. That meant the team was unable to assist him, and without that, the marshalls had to recover the car, resulting in the end of qualifying for the Audi driver.
To kick off Q3, half the field was queued up a minute before the green light. Oscar Piastri was leading the queue and therefore the first to take the track, followed by both Racing Bulls drivers and the Ferrari duo. The Ferrari duo and Norris joined half a minute later but the party was soon to end as it emerged that the Mercedes team had left a radiator cover fitted on Antonelli’s car. That eventually came loose, ending up on the track with Norris driving it to pieces when he ran over it with his left front tyre.
Norris’s car was fine, and so was Antonelli’s, but everybody had to return to the pits as the session was red flagged to clear debris.
Following the stoppage, Antonelli was out on track first but he soon threw up some gravel and ended up aborting his flying lap. That means Russell was first to cross the finish line. Russell did have to fight the car in many areas but proves comfortably faster than the cars behind him. Norris emerged second fastest, half a second down and just ahead of Hadjar. Leclerc, Piatri and Hamilton were each more than a full second behind.
The second attempts were kicked off with Antonelli this time keeping it clean and moving up into first position. Russell however followed it up with three purple sectors to beat his teammate by 3 tenths.
Piastri then moved up into third, dropping behind Leclerc as soon as the Ferrari driver crossed the finish line. Hadjar did the same seconds later to take third, his best ever qualifying in F1.
