The Friday in F1 Qatar GP saw a bounce back from Oscar Piastri in the title fight, with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton struggling for different reasons.
The F1 title fight changed a bit of its course on Friday in Qatar GP under the floodlights at Lusail, as Oscar Piastri returned to the top spot by securing sprint pole. The Australian showed good pace all-through and made the most of the mistake made by Lando Norris.
Even though the margin was only 0.032s, it was enough to pole from Mercedes’ George Russell, who showed good pace in the end. He was surprised to split the McLarens but teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli rued couple of mistakes to loose out on a potential Top 5 result.
It wasn’t the day for Max Verstappen either, who lost to his teammate Yuki Tsunoda for the first time in F1 2025. The Japanese was fifth ahead of the Dutchman after a good show in terms of confidence. He thinks the bigger job is to see-through the weekend with better results.
He was likely to finish fourth but was beaten marginally by Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso. For Verstappen, it was a wrong set-up choice as he expects an enduring F1 sprint before he can change things around for the main qualifying and the grand prix.
The bad mood situation continued at Ferrari after Charles Leclerc was only ninth. The Monegasque felt he had a bit more but was potentially held up by Carlos Sainz on his final run. Teammate Lewis Hamilton had no answers after SQ1 exit where he tried different things but nothing worked.
Piastri: “It’s been a good day, which is nice for a change. It’s been a day where things have clicked from the start and I think the Sprint Qualifying session went really well. I had a pretty big moment on my lap but it was just enough in the end so thanks to the team – it’s a great car and it’s looked really good this weekend so far. I’m pretty happy with that. I think if you hook it up, there’s a 1m 19s in there. We’ll see what we can do, but at the moment I’m just happy with the result.
“There are obviously a few things to try and tidy up but it’s nice to be able to say that when you’re starting on pole. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Obviously it’s only a Sprint pole and for a few points but I’ll take whatever I can get. It’s difficult to know. On a Sprint weekend it’s always really tough to know if you’re fully on top of things from when you roll onto the track, but I think the car’s felt really good all day. We made some good adjustments into Sprint Qualifying which was nice, and I think the pace was there all day. Hopefully we can keep that running.”
Norris: “No, the pace was there. I just made a mistake in the last corner on my first lap and didn’t put it together. It would be stupid to not try and win. I’m here to try and win so I’ll see what I can find overnight and see what we can do for tomorrow. It’s impossible to overtake, so I think I’m going to finish P3, but if I can at least get George off the line or something then that’s probably the most I can hope for
Verstappen: “Yeah, not good. From the first lap, just really bad bouncing and very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high-speed, so just not what you want to go fast. You’re locked in [with set-up for the Sprint race]… We tried to of course change a few things on the wheel, but it never really worked, so that made it quite tricky. [We changed] a few things [after FP1], but it clearly wasn’t working well in Qualifying, so that’s something that we need to understand. With this balance tomorrow in the Sprint, at least, it will not be a lot of fun. It will be more about just trying to survive, I guess, and then make some changes going into Qualifying.”
Tsunoda: “I mean, so far it’s been a clean race weekend, pretty smooth, not any issues happening in practice, and this Qualifying so far. I felt more confidence [going] into the Qualifying. It’s good. It’s good that we had a clean race week so far. I just have to put it all together… There’s three more sessions to go, but I’m sure especially this now is very important for the team, especially for Max [and the Drivers’ Championship battle]. It’s good that both sides of the garage are very focused, and we try to give ourselves the maximum. Also for me as well, I’m happy with the car and with my confidence. Obviously there’s some bit to go for tomorrow, to find that extra little bit of tenths, but I’m excited.”
Russell: “It’s just nice, my Qualifying hasn’t been great recently, bar Singapore. For a while I haven’t had a good session so I was pretty happy to get good laps under my belt and I was always sort of there or thereabouts throughout the session, so that was nice. This track is such a joy to driver around. It’s so quick, the grip is so high, it feels nice. I don’t want to put a downer on it but Turn 1 is probably going to be where we end up really. We briefly spoke about it this morning in the Drivers’ Briefing about why the DRS hasn’t been extended and I hope maybe after the Sprint they can adjust it if needed for the race, but it’s going to be very challenging to overtake but obviously we’re in a good starting position. We’ll take it.”
Hamilton: “No, clearly not [the downforce didn’t help]. The weather’s nice. Tough day out there. We tried a couple of different set ups and it just didn’t work out for us, but we’ll dig into the data tonight and figure out how to come back fighting for a better day tomorrow.”
Leclerc: “The last lap I think [Sainz] was taking quite a significant gap to the car ahead just before Safety Car line 2 and then obviously it puts all the guys behind under stress. He has the right to do that but it’s very annoying and it’s a but unnecessary sometimes. It’s a shame. I had to start the lap too close and when you see the gap between the top five and us, you can say that could have been a better Qualifying. But apart from that, we are very slow and we are struggling once again this weekend. It’s a tough one again. I think it was a few hundredths to Yuki in P5 or a tenth, something like that. I think there was potential to do that. On the other hand, we’ve been struggling… it’s been a difficult weekend so far.”
The Top 10 saw a surprise as noted above with Aston Martin’s Alonso in fourth. The Spaniard felt good all-through and used the pace to set a challenging lap time. Teammate Lance Stroll was knocked out in AQ1 due to traffic, as Alpine pair of Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto too faced SQ1 exit.
They simply lacked pace to proceed any further. Both the Sauber F1 drivers Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg did progress to SQ2 along with Haas’ Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon, but couldn’t go on any further. The former two thought they had a bit more pace than the result.
Hulkenberg noted of a mistake which cost him, as Bortoleto had to fine-tune during the session to get the best of it which limited his run. Bearman, meanwhile, highlighted the gravel issue. He felt the corners didn’t need gravel, which only hampered everyone due to the amount thrown onto the track.
He was stuck behind who had multiple offs which hurt him. Ocon simply struggled with balance. It was half and half for Visa Cash App RB F1 drivers as Liam Lawson was knocked out in SQ1 after he was unable to get a clean lap. Teammate rued track limits as he felt pace was strong to be in SQ3.
He was eventually knocked out in SQ2 despite making it in. The Williams F1 drivers surprised themselves with a double Top 10 result. Carlos Sainz hailed the pace in eighth, while Alexander Albon could have done more but a late exit from the pits left him in hurry mode on his out lap.
Alonso: “One of the better qualifying results of the year for us. The car felt in the window from FP1 and then we managed to put the laps together nicely in Sprint Qualifying despite some challenges with traffic. Let’s go one step at a time and do the Sprint tomorrow and try to improve even further into Qualifying.”
Albon: “It’s been a better start to the weekend than we thought it would be. We aren’t the quickest car out there, but we are in a decent position after only having one practice session today before Sprint qualifying. We came out of the garage too late in SQ3, so we had to scramble a bit to make it to the chequered flag. We have a decent car heading into the Sprint and qualifying, so we’ll look to maximise all our opportunities tomorrow.”
Hadjar: “It was a frustrating Sprint Qualifying. I was doing a good lap but then got track limits in Turn 8, which is a shame as the car has been pretty fast today since FP1. Looking at tomorrow’s Sprint, I expect it to be a bit of a DRS train race, and therefore it will be difficult to make up some ground and score points. We’ll take the positives from today ahead of the main Qualifying.”
Bearman: “I think tyre wear is a little bit less of a factor than in previous years. As tracks age, they get rougher and this year with the tires we have, it’s a simpler warm up. Unfortunately, on my final lap, I was behind a driver who kept going off, so I had a lot of gravel on track, which is mainly an issue of the circuit. A lot of us have said that gravel being at that corner isn’t the best way to solve issues because we then have it everywhere, damaging tyres and ruining laps. I also had traffic in sector three, so it was the perfect storm. I think it’s going to be very hard to overtake on this track as there’s only one DRS zone and a short one at that. The target will be to learn as much as possible before qualifying tomorrow. I feel we have a quicker car than what we showed just now, so I’m happy about that, I’m just a bit disappointed with this qualifying.”
Bortoleto: “I think we did quite okay today, though I feel like we could have squeezed something more out of our car. I didn’t have much grip in the first push in SQ2, and after a quick stop in the pits for some fine-tuning, the second run felt better. It’s obviously a bit disappointing to miss SQ3 by just a tenth and a half, but that’s how close it is out there. Looking at tomorrow’s Sprint, we know overtaking here won’t be easy. We’ll keep pushing, aim for a clean Sprint, and then move forward to deliver a clean Qualifying as well.”
Gasly: “It was a tough Sprint Qualifying for us today and a disappointing end result. On my final lap in SQ1, I just struggled right away at Turn 1 with cold tyres and the grip was just not there opening the lap and we lost a lot of time. After that, the tyres picked up in temperature and Sectors 2 and 3 were much better but the damage was already done from the very start of the lap. It would have been tight to reach SQ2 – we were maybe not quite quick enough today – but at least we have something to learn from and hopefully we can improve for tomorrow’s Qualifying.”
Pirelli: “Today we definitely had better track conditions compared to last year, when the wind had deposited a lot of sand on the surface, which affected grip considerably. The current grip levels, combined with the evolution of the cars since last year, meant that the lap times were not only lower than the equivalent sessions from last year, but also than the simulations. In the single free practice session, teams chose to get to grips with the track using the hard compound – leaving them with one set for the race on Sunday – before concluding the session on the soft.
“The difference between the soft tyre and the C2 medium was clearly seen in sprint qualifying, with a performance gap of around six to seven tenths of a second, while the run plans that the teams were carrying out in FP1 make it harder to define the gap to the hard compound. However, it would appear to be smaller than the predicted simulations. On their flying qualifying laps the drivers were able to recover performance from one lap to the next, especially on the medium tyre, thanks also to track evolution that was more pronounced with every lap. At the end of the sessions, we saw cuts on the tread of some of the tyres caused by gravel pulled onto the circuit by cars that went off into the new gravel traps alongside the track. While the damage isn’t enough to cause any loss of pressure, we’re going to be a close eye on the condition of the tyres during tomorrow’s running.”
Here’s how F1 Qatar GP sprint qualifying panned out
