Piastri beats Norris and Leclerc to secure pole for Sao Paulo F1 Sprint

Oscar Piastri secured pole position for tomorrow’s Sao Paulo F1 Sprint to head a McLaren one-two ahead of his team-mate Lando Norris. F1Technical’s lead journalist Balazs Szabo reports on the nail-biting sprint qualifying.

SQ1 – Early elimination for Alonso

As per the rules, drivers are restricted to Pirelli’s medium tyre in the first two segments of sprint qualifying. Lando Norris set a shocking lap in the dying seconds of SQ1 with a time of 1m09,477s on a set of used mediums.

The British driver was almost eight tenths of a second quicker than what his team-mate Oscar Piastri managed, with Williams racer Alexander Albon setting the third-fastest lap.

Valtteri Bottas delivered the surprise in the opening segment, making it out of SQ1 with the 15th quickest lap.

By contrast, Fernando Alonso endured a shock early elimination as he was the first driver to fail to make the cut into the next qualifying segment. His team-mate Lance Stroll was three tenths of a second slower, and ended up in P19.

Alpine’s Esteban Ocon took 17th, ahead of RB’s Yuki Tsunoda, with Kick Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu rounding off the leaderboard.

Knocked out: Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Yuki Tsunoda, Lance Stroll and Zhou Guanyu.

SQ2 – Shock for Hamilton and Perez

Norris continued his impressive form from SQ1, by pumping in a 1m 09.063s which put him two tenths clear of nearest challenger Oscar Piastri.

Oliver Bearman, who is substituting for an unwell Kevin Magnussen – was fifth quickest while his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was pushed out in SQ2.

Despite his impressive form, Sergio Perez ran out of time to put in another effort in the dying stages of the middle segment which left him down in 13th. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton managed to improve on his last push lap, but it was only enough for a P11.

Knocked out: Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez, Franco Colapinto and Valtteri Bottas.

SQ3 – Piastri bounces back

The last qualifying segment saw McLaren send Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri out very early, just as Williams did with Alexander Albon. After the first lap, the Briton set a 1m08.928s to lead comfortably ahead of the Australian.

However, they stayed out on the track on the same set of red-walled tyres to attempt another flying lap. Piastri managed to find a big chunk of improvement to take over the lead with a lap of 1m08.899s, whereas Norris bailed out of his effort.

Having struggled for pace during the sole practice session, Charles Leclerc ended up third quickest, only two tenths of a second adrift of the pole position time.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen displayed impressive pace through the first sector, but was unable to match the McLarens in the middle part of the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, and took fourth on the grid for tomorrow’s Sao Paulo F1 Sprint.

On the back of his dominant victory at last weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz set the fifth-quickest time, from George Russell in P6.

Alpine driver Pierre Gasly showed a surprising performance to end up seventh on the grid, with Liam Lawson, Alexander Albon and Oliver Bearman completing the top ten.