The Saturday in F1 Qatar GP saw McLaren take centerstage to keep Max Verstappe away, as Lewis Hamilton dipped further after another Q1 exit.
Following on from F1 sprint win in Qatar GP, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri put it on pole in qualifying to delay any chances of Lando Norris taking the title at Lusail circuit. The Brit has match point and has the chance to secure his first world championship if he can win the grand prix.
Piastri hasn’t done anything wrong in the weekend so far and has somewhat answered the conspiracies theories about his struggle in certain conditions. He would want to score the win to take it into Abu Dhabi and create a gap between him and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the process.
For Norris, there was a chance to topple Piastri from top spot in F1 qualifying, but for his mistake in the final attempt. Post-sprint, the Brit highlighted on the ‘nonsense’ talk that Verstappen and Red Bull usually indulge in, not disrespecting the talent and ability that his friend has.
For Verstappen, it was a marked improvement in F1 qualifying than sprint, even though there are struggles still. But the good part is that he is up in the mix to challenge his rivals unlike teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who was at loss of words after Q1 exit due to lack of grip.
It is the story of his campaign where the lap time hasn’t come by, even though he has managed to drive the car without any mistakes. The Ferrari F1 pair had their own set of issues. Charles Leclerc made it in the Top 10 but had the spin, where he admitted to be pushing hard unnecessary.
Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, was knocked out in Q1. He felt the car to be good and drivable, but there was no lap time in the end. He addressed the media stories affecting the F1 team’s morale and day-to-day running. At the other end, his former team Mercedes seems to be holding up well.
Both George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli secured a Top 5 finish to put themselves in the hunt for a podium finish. They felt good with the result, even though there was a bit more in the tank. They are firm to secure second in the F1 constructors’ championship.
Piastri: “It was nice. It was nice to have some clean air again. It makes a pretty big difference. So yeah, just nice to get off to a smooth start to the weekend, really. So yeah, car’s been good so far and I feel like I’ve been able to gel with it pretty good. So yeah, obviously, the short part of the weekend’s over, and now the real stuff begins. Like five or six laps to the end. I think it was front left that was starting to vibrate a bit, and I hadn’t locked up or anything, so it’s never a great sign when you start getting vibrations out of nowhere. So I think it was a similar thing for other people as well. So yeah, we’ll see if there’s any concerns with that, but that was pretty much the only concern. I mean, it’s definitely a different circuit. You know, incredibly high-speed, much higher grip surface as well. But I think, honestly, the last couple of weekends have been not bad in terms of pace.
“It’s just been mistakes or things out of our control going wrong. So, I think this weekend, the pace has been probably a little bit stronger, but everything’s just been smooth. So, I think that’s the biggest difference. As for pole, it obviously helps. Yeah. I mean, the next target is to try and get a good start and then, yeah, that should make life a bit easier if I can do a good job there. So far, so good. But there’s obviously a long way to go. A couple of pit stops for tomorrow as well. So, there’s still a lot that can happen, but everything’s going well so far. I think the start is probably the biggest thing I need to get right tomorrow. I think we saw today with clean air, it’s a massive advantage around here. And with the stint lengths, I think it’s going to be a pretty fast-paced race. So that’s probably the biggest thing to get right. But yeah, still a lot that can happen.”
Norris: “Pretty simple, really. You know, there’s not a lot going on. Nothing much throughout the whole race. Just impossible to follow around here, you know? As soon as you’re within three seconds or so, you start to struggle. So yeah, not a lot. I tried to save my tyres a bit for the end and the pace was certainly a little bit better. But yeah, after doing the whole race not too far behind George, then you pay the price in terms of tyre deg. So yeah, honestly, not too much. In qualifying, in the last run, I had no fuel, so can’t do that. No idea [what I could have done]. Don’t care now. It’s too late. Oscar did a very good job today, has done the whole weekend. I certainly felt a bit more comfortable in the car today, that I could push it a bit more in the way I wanted. So, I felt better. I felt like I did a good first lap. I felt like there were plenty of places I thought I could go quicker. I think Turn 2 wasn’t necessarily one of them, but it was one where I just caught a bit of understeer for some reason, and that was it. So yeah, frustrating because I certainly think I could have done a better job and improved on my lap a good amount — but I didn’t.
“So, second on the grid for us tomorrow. Same as every day. I’m second, so not a whole chance for me to win at the minute. But yeah, I just focus on trying to get a good start. That’s all. In terms of Max in the sprint, no. Look, yeah. Of course, I saw him. But he was never too much of a threat at all. So no, my focus was more just on George and seeing how I could keep the tyres in a good place for later. But Max is very welcome to say everything he wants, to be honest. He’s kind of earned the right. You know, he’s won four World Championships. I have a lot of respect and I think that gives anyone a lot of credit. He’s achieved an incredible amount – more than anyone generally dreams of achieving. So, you know, Max generally has a good clue about a lot of things, but there’s also a lot of things he doesn’t have much of a clue about. It’s also Red Bull’s way of going about things, this kind of aggressive nature and, yeah, just talking nonsense a lot of the time. So it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it – like you love to – or you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down, keep focused. So maybe he would have done, but he hasn’t so far, and he keeps trying.”
Verstappen: “It was better. Just trying to cancel out a bit the issues that we had yesterday, which felt a little bit nicer, but still there. Plus, just not really having enough front grip still, which is then limiting you a bit around the lap around here, especially with all these long medium-speed corners. And yeah, that basically doesn’t allow you to push harder. That is basically what happened also in qualifying. We tried to make the best out of it in terms of prep, making sure that we’re on top of everything with what we can change still. So, it was alright. I mean, the final lap was good but just limited with the issues that I’m experiencing at the moment. A few bits that we thought about that would help the car — which it did. Unfortunately, still some limitations.
“They stay in there, but they’ve been in the car for a while now. It’s not like it suddenly just arrived here and we don’t know how to solve it or whatever. It’s been a weakness for us this season, especially in these long medium-speed corners. In the race, if I don’t pass him, then he scores more points than me. It will be tough. I mean, in the Sprint as well, I tried, but then we just fall into that window where we just struggle a lot on the tyres and we don’t seem to really be able to keep up. And also, the final laps of Oscar in the Sprint, I need to cut a corner to do that. So, it will be maybe a little bit better, but yeah, it will be tough, I think. But let’s see. It’s a long race. Anything can happen.”
Russell: “Yeah, it was a pretty lonely race, to be honest. It was fun, because it was flat out, but I didn’t really have any chance of attacking Oscar and had a pretty good gap ahead of Lando as well. So it was pretty uneventful until the last three laps – similar to Oscar’s – started getting a big vibration on the tyres. I could just see it opening up and I thought, “yeah, this could be it,” you know, bit of a puncture or something. So just brought it home in the last two laps. In qualifying, a little bit annoying, a little bit annoying but I was pleased with my two laps, so I don’t leave feeling that frustrated because as I was… felt like I maximised the grip. It’s probably to do three perfect laps in a season, and then you may do, I don’t know, 10 very good ones and this was in the camp of a very good lap. It wasn’t a great lap, but it was a very good lap and I can’t be disappointed. It’s just where we were. Yeah, I think a lot of drivers were very close with the front left tyre wear.
“Obviously, we all maxed out at 25 laps on the medium tyres today when you account for the six laps that everybody did in qualifiers, so everybody did 25 laps on that medium and that was very much the limit. So yeah, I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see if people do the medium, medium, hard, which would be the most logical thing to protect from the undercut, but you may see somebody put hard on in the middle or the hard at the beginning, maybe Max potentially will do something different and considering he’s on the clean side of the grid, he’s got an advantage there, so he can probably afford to start on the hard tyre and it would still get a better start if not more than the medium tyre. So, I could potentially foresee that happening and of course the McLaren drivers wouldn’t do that because the risk is too great. So, that’s probably our only opportunity.”
Hamilton: “Yeah, we made changes, the car felt better. I think the early session was looking pretty decent and then just didn’t get the last lap. Not really, you saw in the sprint there’s no overtaking, so I’ll try something different of a strategy, maybe and see what I can do tomorrow. Stability, the challenge is stability [with the car]. We’re obviously lacking downforce to the others [F1 Teams]. We haven’t developed the car for some time, so the cars have been on the ragged edge, and I guess just a bit of luck. There’s far other things that are in need of attention [than development]. Yeah, the development’s not been the issue. I mean, I wanted them to move to next year’s car when we knew the car was not good. I wanted to make sure we started early. So I was in full support of that. It means it’s a long year with what we’ve had. There’s just other things that need to be worked on.
“I’ve definitely felt better, but I’m OK. I mean, it’s my first year with them, so I haven’t noticed it. I think the results for sure, you know, for all the mechanics, all the engineers that turn up every weekend, for everyone back at the factory, I’m sure the results… it’s hard for them. They’re turning up and giving their best, but I don’t think that’s [development] related, it’s just what we’ve been faced with this year. And also the negativity that’s constantly within the media and everything like that, that affects them, they get home to their wives and their wives say ‘they’ve been saying this about the people where you work’ and I’m sure that’s tough for them and then the kids and all those things. So there’s a huge effect on lots of people.”
Leclerc: “It was incredibly difficult. I mean, the whole weekend has been unbelievably difficult. The car is really, really difficult to drive and, yeah, it’s just frustrating. I mean, the second lap in Q3 was a really good one, but that’s only good enough for P10 and that is, once again, very frustrating. Its been a really difficult weekend. I took a stupid amount of risks, like I do on every single corner in Q3 to try and get P8, P9, but it was a little bit too much. Then I brought it back for Q3 and for Q3 run two that was just fine and it was a really good lap, but there wasn’t anything more in the car. It has to be [that] because we’ve tried different set-ups, we’ve tried different approaches and there’s no way out of this situation. The car is just not fast enough. It’s not like we have a huge balance problem.
“Even though at one point the car is going to slide front or rear whenever you push it to the limit, but we just go too far to that limit to try and extract a little bit of performance and that makes it very, very, very difficult to drive the car. Just not enough performance and I hope that in Abu Dhabi we can come back to our level, but that wouldn’t change, obviously, the very disappointing season. I’m generally a very optimistic person, but I struggle to find any optimism for tomorrow. There’s not one lap this weekend that gave me the hope that things can go in the right direction. So a good day tomorrow will be to keep the car on track and to try and score a few points. I mean, I don’t want to go into a race thinking about taking a few points and keeping the car on track, so I’ll try to get into the top 10, but realistically and do I really believe in it? I honestly don’t.”
Tsunoda: “Yeah, I don’t have no idea what happened because lap was pretty tidy, similar to what I had even the yesterday P5. Car was pretty much same. We changed one thing, but shouldn’t affect like that massive and, yeah, no idea. Like yeah, suddenly lost the grip off pace. Yeah, well, still. I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard to understand because…yeah. Let’s see what’s the conclusion, but strange. No errors.
“You can, if you want to see the lap, you can see. I mean, yeah. I try my best in it, but I think the mandatory two stops and even probably less, that clouds a little bit or almost narrows down the strategy what we can do within that with all teams. So that will automatically make a little bit difficult to overtake other cars, to be honest. So yeah, at the start, I’ll try as much as possible to gain position and, yeah let’s see.”
The Top 10 featured list of midfield cars led by Visa Cash App RB’s Isack Hadjar. The Frenchman too dived into the pits on his second run knowing there was no improvement, but still managed sixth in a good show. He couldn’t stop smiling considering his future at Red Bull is mostly set and done.
Teammate Liam Lawson was knocked out in Q2 as he rued the inconsistent run in F1 qualifying. Even though Williams’ Carlos Sainz found his way into the Top 10, the Spaniard was wary of Hadjar’s performance. He was happy to take seventh after a freak incident to start Q3.
The team ended up getting 5000 euros fine for garage floor sticker getting stuck on the tyres of Sainz. Teammate Alexander Albon felt better in the car, but had no grip to slide around and finish a lowly P15. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly were elated to be in the Top 10.
Both wanted to start inside points, but didn’t think it was possible. Their cars are in no position to out match its near rivals, but they were happy to be on the other side unlike teammates Lance Stroll and Franco Colapinto, who ended up knocked out in Q1 itself after lack of grip.
Both the Sauber and Haas F1 drivers expected a bit more from qualifying. Nico Hulkenberg missed by just but feels he is in a good position for the race, while Gabriel Bortoleto is not far off. Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon felt the pinch despite some headways, but could only manage double Q2.
Gasly: “Yeah, I must say I’m extremely happy with the work of the team because yeah, from yesterday both cars in, the last two positions to today being able to get to Q3 was a massive step forward. And the car to drive was, yeah, so much better. Obviously on a sprint weekend it’s always hard to get it right with only one session, and tried to make the best out of that sprint this morning starting from the pit lane. And yeah, it was very good because, got to a much better place with the car. I feel very confident, managed to put some very strong lap out there, and yeah, we were quite far from imagining getting to the Top 10 before qualifying. I must say this weekend was a bit of an odd one, where we struggled quite a lot with bouncing yesterday, didn’t really have this issue this season. So, yeah, it caught us a bit by surprise.
“And with only one FP1, it’s kind of limited running to fix it. So yeah, it wasn’t great in the qualifying yesterday and yeah, we changed a few other things which…it’s fine tuning, but when you look at the gap and how tight it is on the track like that, it’s the difference, yeah, quite a big difference. I was going to take the credit for that one [in sprint switching to soft] because it was my idea this morning to do that. I was like, okay, if we’re not fighting for anything, at least I’d like to get a feel on the soft. And yeah, I mean, instead of being stuck in Lewis’ rear wing and not truly getting a fair feel of the balance, at least I got a clean lap. And I think it gave us confidence going into the quality that we were doing the right things.”
Alonso: “I was quite surprised we were able to fight for Q3 again tonight and I’m happy with P8. We only had four sets of new Softs in Qualifying, so we opted to use them in Q1 and Q2 and it meant we were left with used tyres at the end in Q3. We scored two points earlier in the Sprint, but I think it will be more difficult for us tomorrow as the tyre degradation is quite high. Every point is crucial at the moment for the Constructors’, so we will give it our all.”
Hadjar: “We had a pretty good Saturday and I’m happy with the performance we showed. This afternoon in the Sprint I had an awesome first lap, and if I hadn’t lost the position during a battle with Kimi and Carlos, then I would have probably been able to score a point. Later in Qualifying, I think we really extracted the maximum from the car as we couldn’t have finished higher up in the standings; P6 was really our best today. I felt the car was easy to drive and I reached the limit pretty quickly in the session, then from there I just made tiny steps lap by lap. Looking at tomorrow, it’s going to be important to have a good start even if we start from the wrong side of the grid. I expect it to be a full push race and the target is to score points.”
Sainz: “We took another step in that direction in quali and it seemed to again do some steps in the right direction. Overall, honestly, just happy with the weekend so far. We’ve been very solid, points in the sprint, a position better now in quali. And in the Top 7 going into the race, if you would have told me before the weekend, I would have not believed it. So, I think it’s been a very good weekend up until now, three good laps in quali. I hit 20.2s in Q2 and then I felt like I just couldn’t get any quicker than 20.2s. Felt like that was the limit of the car. And in Q3 even with that scare of the plastic and damaging the body work and having to repair, I don’t know if I was carrying any damage or not. But after that scare, managing to hit the 20.2 and being P7, I take it and we’ll race from there. I’ve been pushing hard since Budapest, that we had a very off weekend in this kind of track corner, to say, ‘let’s make sure we use this year as a learning and try something in Qatar’. Because in Qatar, in theory, we should suffer. It should be a very tricky weekend for us. So let’s make sure we put a plan together. I had some ideas in the simulator that I wanted to test. The team came up with other ideas.
“We put them all together. We went to a simulator. We tested the car and that gave us, what we believe was maybe potentially a good baseline maybe to start the weekend and give it a bit of a go. And right from the get go, it was working well this weekend and it has given us good understandings, good learnings, and confidence because as a team it is important to do these sort of tests and get them to work. I mean in the race, it will be a midfield battle with Hadjar, Alonso, Gasly, Leclerc, Hulkenberg. In theory, I’m starting in the clean side. That should give me a good start off the line. And then hopefully that means also we can be the leaders of the midfield if we manage to pass Isack, which, I don’t know if we, it will be possible or not, but once you lead from there, there’s still two pit stops to go. And I think the key is going to be more the first stop when people decide to stop because that gives you more or less the, the plan for the rest of the race or you reveal a bit your plan. So, I think it will be an interesting strategy display tomorrow. And yeah, even after the start, you can still hopefully do something different.”
Hulkenberg: “It was a clean qualifying session for us: I’m relatively happy with the laps and the effort we put in, although it’s frustrating to miss out on Q3 for just three thousandths of a second. The margins were incredibly fine and that time was probably out there somewhere. Still, we are on the edge of the top ten and we have an extra set of soft tyres for tomorrow’s race: we’ve seen this morning, in the Sprint, how difficult overtaking can be, but we are competitive and we’re around cars we can fight.”
Bearman: “The Sprint was quite uneventful – the race was difficult with the balance that I had. I was struggling quite a lot, and that was getting worse as I went on, so for the last few laps I was really hanging on. We’ve learned a lot from this race, so we get to fix things for the race tomorrow. Yesterday, we were very uncompetitive in high-speed, so that’s really what we need to fix. We made a big step with the car for qualifying, which is positive, I had a much better feeling than I did this time yesterday. Unfortunately, in Q2 I think we chose the wrong approach, I went for two laps at the end, where in hindsight I think the peak of the tire was in that first lap, but I was carrying the extra fuel of the run plan I was doing, so it’s fine margins. I’m going to remain open-minded and positive, we made a big step with the car, so I’ll look forward to tomorrow.”
Here’s how F1 Qatar GP qualifying panned out
Here’s how F1 Qatar GP sprint panned out