Norris leads front-row lockout for McLaren, Verstappen P5

Elsewhere, Charles Leclerc lost his best lap in Q2 to a track limits violation for Ferrari, which boosts McLaren’s chances of netting the constructors’ title even further given its 1-2 result, while Lewis Hamilton’s final weekend for Mercedes included a shock Q1 exit.

Verstappen had looked in control through the opening segments, with the Dutchman the only driver to get through to Q3 with two sets of new softs remaining.

He used his first to lead with a 1m22.945s, albeit with a lurid slide out of the final corner, with Norris trailing by 0.004s at this stage.

On the final runs, Verstappen ran last of the pack, but did not improve, as the added grip punch of the new softs got McLaren back to the pacesetting position it had established in FP1 and FP2.

Piastri shot to a 1m22.804s, which shuffled outgoing Haas star Nico Hulkenberg back from the provisional pole he had snared with the opening effort on the final runs – the German eventually ending up behind Sainz in fourth.

Norris then came by to edge his team-mate by 0.21s with the quickest time in the final sector, with Piastri’s Q3 appearance starting with him temporarily losing his first run time as he flirted with the track limits exiting Turn 1.

Behind on the final fliers, Verstappen only set a personal best in the final sector and so did not go quicker overall – the Dutchman finishing ahead of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and George Russell for Mercedes in fifth.

In Q2, Leclerc looked to have progressed as the fastest runner, with previous segment leader Verstappen even temporarily out of his car in the pits, but the Ferrari driver slipped fractionally beyond track limits at Turn 1 and so lost his 1m22.985s personal best.

Unlike Red Bull with Perez in Q1, Ferrari could not get Leclerc’s time reinstated as a patch of blue kerb paint was visible as he went deep through the left-hander and his fall to 14th means he will start from the last row of the grid with his battery-change grid penalty.

In Q1, Hamilton was the big shock faller – the Mercedes driver down towards the drop zone after the intial runs and with a big track improvement factor evidenced from his former team-mate Bottas jumping from 16th to second in the segment eventually topped by Leclerc.

At the end of Hamilton’s final flier, where he was trailing Magnussen all around, the Haas of Magnussen cutting Turn 14 and knocking a green bollard into his path meant the seven-time world champion had to do the final corners with his car’s handling compromised.