With his time of 1.04.984, Verstappen was only 29 thousandths of a second faster than Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc. His teammate Carlos Sainz was also within a tenth of Verstappen. For the Dutchman it is his third pole of the year, but in both Imola and Montreal it happened in the rain. Now it was dry.
In Q1, many times were canceled due to exceeding the track limit in turn 10 in particular. Verstappen’s first timed lap was also cancelled. In the end, the Dutchman set the third time in that ‘heat’, behind Leclerc and Sainz. Q1 proved to be the final destination for the still struggling Daniel Ricciardo, Lance Stroll, Guanyu Zhou, Nicholas Latifi and Sebastian Vettel.
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In Q2, Verstappen only had to tolerate Leclerc, who was just a little faster. Lewis Hamilton set the third fastest time. Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris dropped out after that round. Both Haas drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher, among others, thus qualified for the decisive series.
Crashes Mercedes
In that series, Verstappen immediately started well with the fastest lap. A Hamilton crash in turn 7, of course, halted qualifying for some time. The fact that the seven-time world champion crashed caused a lot of cheers among the many Dutch fans. Until that mistake, Hamilton seemed on his way to a strong qualifying result.
After the track was reopened, it went wrong again almost immediately. This time with Hamilton’s teammate George Russell, who lost the rear of his Mercedes as he entered the final corner and slammed into the tire stack backwards.
Verstappen seemed to have to pause for a moment on his very last lap, as he was slower in the first two sectors than in the previous lap. Thanks to the fastest last sector, he still kept the Ferraris behind.