The Saturday in F1 Las Vegas GP was competitive as Mercedes and Ferrari did well ahead of Red Bull and McLaren, while Alpine made some merry.
For once, Mercedes could carry the practice momentum into F1 qualifying in Las Vegas GP on Saturday after George Russell managed to take pole in a sweep so far for the German outfit from FP1 onward. After Friday was led by Lewis Hamilton, his teammate made merry on Saturday.
Both the drivers are not sure how the car is performing well in Las Vegas, but it could be down to the conditions and temperature. The key for Russell will be to hang on especially against Ferrari. Teammate Hamilton lost out at a crucial juncture in Q3, otherwise he was gunning for pole himself.
Hamilton took the blame on not getting the job done to be only 10th in the end. As noted, Mercedes should face stiff challenge from Ferrari after Carlos Sainz ended up second, with Charles Leclerc in fourth. Both have hopes from their race pace to challenge for the win and collect as many points.
Considering that they are not too sure about Qatar, they want to score as much against McLaren. Leclerc, meanwhile, was not happy after his Q3 run where he felt his tyres behaved like ice. But still, he managed to put himself ahead of both the Red Bull and McLaren cars.
It was salvage job for Max Verstappen to be fifth and crucially ahead of Lando Norris. The Dutchman felt a touch happy with the car from practice, but had questions about the tam’s decision to not have a separate skinny rear wings for tracks like Las Vegas – accepting that there is nothing they can do now.
The Brit, meanwhile, is resigned to the fact that he will lose the drivers’ title to the Dutchman. Both he and Oscar Piastri noted that the car simply didn’t suit the conditions. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez faced another Q1 exit, as he continued to face balance troubles and felt their strategy was probably wrong to only run on the one set of tyres.
Russell: “Yeah, incredibly satisfying, and especially knowing the car’s been so quick all weekend. You know, as a team, we’ve topped every single session. And nevertheless, when you get to Q3, you know what’s happened beforehand has no influence whatsoever. So the pressure kind of is ramped up. And, you know, it was a little bit touch and go for a moment because we had to change the front wing. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get the last lap. But then it was a super strong lap, especially the first two sectors, and just really, really pleased to secure the pole. I think probably between the very first car and the very last car who does their lap, it’s probably over a tenth. It’s probably the biggest track ramp of the whole season. So I wanted to put it all on the line. And it’s high risk. I knew that if there were no yellow flags, then we would, you know, we had the possibility to be on the front row.
“But ultimately, as well, I want to say thanks to the guys in the garage to get the front wing change so quick as well, because, as I said, I touched the wall in the first run and we could have missed that last run altogether. Regarding our pace, I’d say the trend that we’ve seen this season of being quicker, or let’s say at the upper end of a timesheet, has probably been down more to the fact that our rivals use a bit more fuel, probably not using their high power. Whenever our strategists have done the review, we normally end up qualifying where they predicted we’d be after practice. It’s just when you see the timesheets, it’s maybe a little bit more flattering. But this weekend, it was slightly different again because the track was so different in FP1 and FP2. The lap times were probably four or five seconds quicker come qualifying. And it’s a very challenging decision on a Thursday night when the car is working well. You don’t want to touch it, but it’s going to be totally different tomorrow.
“And you need to make some changes to follow the track improvement. So yeah, as I said, still was still scratching our heads a little bit as to why, but it’s been a great weekend so far. As for the race, I think the long run for everybody has been very challenging on the Medium and the Soft. There’s a lot of graining. We saw the same last year, but I expect the Hard tyre to be very resilient. But not one single driver has run the Hard tyre as yet this whole weekend. So you’re going to be learning on the fly. It’s going to be probably surviving that first stint and going from there. But, you know, here in Vegas, anything can happen. It’s a long race. There was a timely Safety Car for a number of people last year, and we also saw that last race in Brazil. So, you know, right now I’m very happy, very satisfied, but I’m not taking anything for granted going into tomorrow.”
Hamilton: “I just didn’t go a good job. The car felt different in Q3, and the stability was not there for some reason, but I’d had it in all the other sessions. But ultimately I didn’t put the laps together. The tyres were difficult. That’s why we did a prep lap and I think that was the wrong call to do a prep lap on my side. And then it kind of domino effected from there. Yeah [it was rear instability]. It’d been really good up until then. And obviously you saw my pace. And then since we got to Q3, it just started snapping away. Well, I think, we think, it’s tyres. But I mean, we don’t know why we’re fast as we can. It must be something to do with temperatures. Not really [no problems with George on pole]. I feel great, to be honest. I wish I was on pole. George is on pole. It’s great for the team. It’s not a stinger. I’ll move forwards. I’ve got three shots. Three pops in it. Two more pops in the next races and we’ll see how it goes. The good thing is I’ve got pace.”
Sainz: “It must have been a good lap. My previous best lap time was a 32.7. So I went down three tenths on that lap and it felt good. I was pushing the limits. At one point I thought I had pole position because I thought I was one of the last ones to cross the line. But then suddenly they told me George was coming and I knew that the Mercedes had been quick all weekend. They’ve been a bit of a step ahead of us, especially on a single lap. And I knew at that point that, yeah, George could take it. They’ve been particularly quick in Sector 1. We’re taking three or four tenths on them every single lap. And even if my lap from Sector 2 and 3 onwards is very good, it just looks like Sector 1, they’ve been a bit too strong for us. But tomorrow, everything changes. Everyone will be running on grained tyres, on high fuel, and very different conditions. situation as today, and it will be everything open again. I think the race is not won or lost in Turn 1.
“At the same time, I feel like this year there’s more grip in Turn 1 than there was last year. So, yeah, let’s see. The thing with Vegas is we might wake up tomorrow and the track might be completely dirty again like it was in FP3 and we’re only doing laps to the grid, but we are not passing through Turn 1. No one’s going to know what amount of grip is in Turn 1. Hopefully I get a good start and obviously I can get George into Turn 1. But obviously at the same time, there’s so little grip and so many unknowns and so much possibility of overtaking around Vegas that it’s also down to a very long race. So let’s see. I think tomorrow we should have the pace to fight for the win. At the same time, there’s too many unknowns to confirm or deny that. A lot of it will be graining, graining limitation, who can control the graining better. But even if we might see some teams struggling a lot on Medium tyres, then the Hard resets everything again because no one’s run the Hard. And we know that we are not the best team on Hard tyres this season. So yeah. Too many unknowns to tell, but I’m confident that we can fight for a win. As I said, I think we are genuinely fighting for the win with Mercedes tomorrow.
“They went through a run of winning, I think, three consecutive races in mid-season and whenever they get it together, they are very, very fast and the fastest, like they’ve shown today. So I think we’re definitely going to fight George. I think Pierre, if he keeps these lap times, why not? And of course, Charles behind in P4 and who is P5? Max. Maybe with his higher downforce car can take a better care of the tyres and the graining and then suddenly he can get in the mix also. So I think we’re fighting many cars and I think that is the beauty of Formula 1 nowadays, it’s that we went into this qualifying with four teams being capable of taking pole position, four teams capable of winning tomorrow if you put everything together and that’s a great thing for everyone, I think.”
Verstappen: “In the corners and on the straights. We know that with our wing naturally you lose top speed, especially with the DRS open. It’s a bit of a handicap. We knew that and that’s something that we have to deal with on a track like this track, like Monza. But also besides that, I always felt like, the tyres were a bit of a struggle for us to get them in the right operating window. I do think that we did the best we could in qualifying with what we had, and then P5 is the result. We got a bit lucky because with Lewis not putting a lap in, otherwise it would have been P6. I think we really maximised what we could. Yesterday I think we were more than a second off. And today, that’s a little bit less. I also really feel like we optimised it as a team. But of course still too slow. But I think already more than half of that is already just on the straights. So that is just something that… There’s nothing that you can do. Of course, the wing is not the most efficient, but hopefully, when everyone has DRS closed, it’s a little bit better. Because when you trim your DRS flat, naturally you have less of a DRS effect and that is what is quite painful in qualifying.
“In the race when you try to pass people you have less of an effect, so that will be a bit more difficult, but yes, hopefully we are just decent on tyres. My long runs haven’t been really that good but we also made some changes to the car and hopefully that will help the tyres out as well. With the rear wing, we opted to not make one, we don’t have one. So this is already from 2022, I think we just never thought we would run it that low. And then with the budget cap, you choose your priorities and we shifted that. We would have liked to have a lower wing, a lower-downforce wing, or at least a different shape, a more efficient shape. It’s something I will look at but, on the other hand, there’s only one more year left with these rules, and I don’t know if it makes sense. But for me at least, it feels a bit like we throw away two race weekends like this because you definitely lose too much on the straights.”
Norris: “I know, it’s incredible. Especially because we have the fastest car by a mile, right? Yeah, weird. Maybe it’s the water in the tyres or something. Yeah, all of this stuff, you know. They’re right about everything. No, it’s just this very low grip. It just doesn’t suit us. It doesn’t suit our characteristic of car. We have to drive the car on the perfect limit if we want to be quick. It takes a lot, I think, to get everything out of our car normally. When we do, we can be quick. Here it’s just too difficult to get everything out of the car. Every lap there’s another issue or a different issue and it was just too much of a challenge. It’s been a challenge the last two days. Nothing’s changed from yesterday. It’s just others have turned up and gone lower fuel and things like that. Maybe it wasn’t our best Q3. I made a couple of small mistakes, but mistakes which were just very difficult to avoid. And it was just too difficult to put a clean lap in because I’m trying to go quicker, but at the same time I’m trying to not make any mistake. And a mistake around here can easily be one-tenth, two-tenths gone. Just too much of a challenge for us out there. That’s our issue, it’s not tyres, it’s not because they’re too hot or too cold or all of this nonsense. Or the water.
“It’s just our car doesn’t suit these conditions. As for the title, I mean, whether he wins or not tomorrow, for me it’s not going to change anything. He’s pretty likely to win the championship, but I’m here to race and do my best in every single race I can, whether Max finishes ahead or not, that’s life. He’s only just ahead of us today. I think we have a chance to beat them tomorrow, but I’ll go out and do my best like I do in every single race. And whatever the outcome is, the outcome is. At the minute, [hoping to beat Ferrari is] what you would say. It could be that tomorrow, we put on the hard tyre, and things come our way a little bit. Every race this year, we struggled with graining. We’ve not been good on the softer tyres. That’s the same now, but it’s almost the case in a quali lap, you almost start to grain the tyres already. We struggle a lot in these kind of conditions. So I’m hoping, when you put a medium on…they still grain very easily, but when you put the hard on, hopefully things click a little bit.
“It’s just our weaknesses on how the car is with the front tyres. It’s been an issue for a while. We’ve not been able to tackle as much as what I would have liked at this point. So we’re paying the price for that kind of thing. We’ll be optimistic and we’ll look ahead to what we can achieve. But, yeah, I don’t expect anything magical for sure, but it’s a long race. [I’m proud], of course. I mean, I’m the one there fighting Max. So I’m proud that it’s me and not anyone else. Do I wish it could have gone a bit further down the line? Sure. But the race [for the title] was lost in the first six races of the year. That’s when Max dominated, when Red Bull were too far ahead and points got to a gap which was just too difficult to claw back. So I’m proud. I’m happy we brought it as far, and it’s us, no one else.”
Perez: “We’ve been lacking a lot of pace through the qualifying, and that’s been the main issue really for us. So it didn’t get any better, and in hindsight, we should have used two sets, given that we were not so competitive in Q1. The main struggle is really that low speed with the tyres, it’s where the main struggle comes from. The low-speed has been quite tricky and then the sliding, I feel like if I slide a bit too much on one tyre, then I finish it. I think tomorrow is going to be a very tricky one. Yeah, there’s a long race ahead, a lot of things will happen, and I believe we will be more competitive come race day. [Thursday] we looked a lot better over the long race than over a single lap.
“I think we’ve got a fundamental issue at the moment with the car that is just not working for me. It is where the whole brain is going to try and fix it up instead of being compromising. And at the moment, we come to the weekends and we just explore a lot of things, and yeah, it’s just a difficult one to make it work. It’s obviously not ideal. You want to be up there, especially I know what I can do. But when you don’t have that grip underneath you, then it’s really hard, and you’re prone to a lot of mistakes and so on.”
The drop of Perez and Aston Martin cars allowed for multiple teams in the Top 10. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly made the most out of it by putting the car in third – in a surprise to the driver and his team. He is in a good position to score, as is teammate Esteban Ocon just outside the Top 10.
Gasly’s performance once again overshadowed a good run for Visa Cash App RB’s Yuki Tsunoda in seventh. The Japanese driver wasn’t certain about a Q3 finish after practice, but he managed to get a lap in at a crucial time, whereas Liam Lawson made an error in Q2 which forced him to abort his lap.
Even the Haas pair of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen were not too pleased despite finishing ninth and 12th, as they felt they should have been higher up after practice. But Kick Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu was pleased to find himself in Q2 after small sacrifice from Valtteri Bottas.
The Finn is carrying a penalty anyhow. It was another jolt for Aston Martin pair Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, where both were out in Q1. The Spaniard expected such result, while the Canadian managed to do just the one lap after an ERS issue after FP3.
For Williams, Alexander Albon didn’t have the tyres properly prepped to lose out in Q1, where teammate Franco Colapinto made it in but then a mistake cost him heavy in Q2. A call whether he starts on Sunday or not, will be taken before the grand prix now.
Gasly: “It’s absolutely incredible, you know, as a team. Exactly as you mentioned, we started Bahrain on the last row with both cars, and all of a sudden, the last few weeks have been quite a change. I’m really happy and pleased with the work the team has been doing in a season where everything looked impossible, just to still stick together and put some more performance in that car. Going into qualifying today, I must admit we never thought we’ll be in a position to actually you know get in that top three, but yeah, I managed to have a very special lap at the right time on that last set in Q3. It’s a it’s a very nice surprise. I mean, we went with a pretty aggressive package in terms of downforce, so we are running very little downforce around this track.
“We try to maximise the straight lines, we obviously make our lives slightly harder in the corners. But yeah, I think it’s a challenging track. It’s very cold conditions. It’s quite an outlier in the season. But I had a nice feeling in the car since P1. P2 went well. P3 went well. And then in that Q3, we managed to make it work with only one set of new tyres as well. So there was definitely some good pace. And yeah, for now, I’m very pleased. Obviously, it’s only qualifying, but I think it’s probably the first time I qualify in the top three. And it feels like it was a special one. At the minute, that’s not really what I’m thinking about.
“I think we know where the target is for us. We’re fighting Haas and AlphaTauri (sic) in the Constructors’. Obviously, whatever happened in that quali is amazing. It feels good to be in front of Max and McLaren and these guys. But at the end of the day, it’s not our fight. So we’ll give our best shot tomorrow. Exactly as Carlos said, it’s a challenging one around here with the graining. So we’ll make sure we do our homework tonight to maximize the chances tomorrow. But for sure, from P3, we increase our chances to get some good points.”
Tsunoda: “I’m really happy about our performance today. Coming to qualifying we didn’t expect to get through to Q3, and compared to the start of the weekend we made a quick turnaround, so thanks and well done to the team for the big effort. We were able to understand our upgrades, and once we found the direction to follow, we were able to improve session by session. Our main competitors have also done a good job, so it won’t be an easy race tomorrow, but anything can happen, especially in a street circuit. We’ll stay focused and do as much as we can.”
Hulkenberg: “Around this track you always think there could’ve been more, but it’s tough. With the low-grip feeling, sometimes you try more and massively overstep and lose it, it’s a very fine line here and it’s challenging for everyone. All in all, it was a decent qualifying but I would’ve liked to have been a bit more ahead – I think P6 was only half a tenth away – so that would’ve made me happier, but we’ll try and race well tomorrow. We have a good race car, so I’m optimistic.”
Guanyu: “It’s great to be back in Q2! We’ve made solid progress throughout the weekend, and I’m very satisfied with today’s session. Considering the limited practice in FP3, I’m really happy with my qualifying lap — it felt quite strong, and I believe we extracted most from the car. Starting in such a competitive position creates an opportunity for us, and it’s a testament to the team’s hard work. Tomorrow, we’ll give it everything we’ve got to capitalise on this strong starting point and fight for a great result.”
Alonso: “It was a bit expected because in the last four, five months — I think after the summer break — we’ve been uncompetitive generally. So going out of Q1 is not an easy task for us at the moment. And with the improved Williams, Haas, you know, we seem to fall in that position. I guess in Qatar and Abu Dhabi will not be much different. Our fight at the moment is a little bit too much at the back, but we need to keep learning. We need to keep trying, and tomorrow, even if it’s a difficult race, we need to keep some hope that anything can happen in the race. We saw last year a couple of safety cars. Street circuits, the walls are very close, so maybe it’s a good day for us if we’re lucky.”
Williams: “During Qualifying Franco sustained a significant impact of over 50G, requiring a medical check up. An impact of this magnitude is obviously significant and severe and he will need to be evaluated again tomorrow before we will know whether he is clear to race. Franco’s health is all that matters and we are glad he is otherwise okay. We will provide further updates when we can.”
Here’s how F1 Las Vegas GP qualifying panned out
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