The Friday in F1 US GP saw Max Verstappen take the centerstage ahead of McLaren pair, with Ferrari suffering again at the fag end of Top 10.
It was another win for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on Friday in F1 US GP at Circuit of the Americas after the Dutchman pipped McLaren’s Lando Norris to sprint pole by just the 0.071s margin. Having trailed him in the first two part, he found enough to topple the Brit in his final attempt.
Crucially, both the F1 title contenders finished ahead of Oscar Piastri in third. The Brit conceded that McLaren was not as fast in sprint qualifying, but he feels he has pace to win the race. The Australian, meanwhile, thought he did not get it all together in his run to be third.
Mercedes F1 pair had a divided run as George Russell went early to be fifth behind a surprise from Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg. The Brit felt his lap was enough with the one-lap pace they had. Teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli was knocked out just by the Ferrari pair.
He made couple of mistakes on his lap, but reckons the race pace is better placed. The knockout zone also had Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda, who was out in SQ1 itself. The team apologised for miscalculating the time, as he was left high and dry and couldn’t even start a final quick lap.
On Ferrari’s side, Lewis Hamilton managed to finish ahead in eighth as he felt the pace dropped as they stepped out in SQ2 and SQ3, which confused him. Charles Leclerc felt it was the maximum result they could achieve after a P10 finish, where he was surprised to see some cars ahead of them.
Verstappen: “It’s been a nice qualifying. Throughout all of the segments, we were quite close. It was just about putting it all together at the end, when it matters most, which is not easy because you go to the soft compound with no reference. It worked out well. I still expect it to be a tough battle tomorrow with the Sprint, but that is exactly what we want to see, right? So yeah, I’m excited for tomorrow and happy with today. A big one. They are super-fast. We know that normally in the race, they step it up a little bit, so it will be tough.”
Norris: “Of course I would have loved to have been on pole, but [it’s] not a surprise for us to be a bit slower than the Red Bull lately. I’m still pretty happy. I don’t know how much I was off by, but there are a little couple of things probably here and there that I could have improved on, and I just caught a few bumps a little bit wrong let’s say, but that’s just the difficulty of this track. Otherwise all happy. [The gap?] Oh, quite a bit. I’m sure if you asked most people are they confident through Sector 1 with the bumps they’d probably say no, so it depends. I think around here you just have to be happy with not being very comfortable, I think that’s kind of the trick. Otherwise [it was] okay.
“I think the laps were pretty good, obviously found good steps of time throughout, just easy to catch the bump in the wrong angle or a bit too much throttle here and there over the bumps and you probably lose seven hundredths. Not the end of the world, but of course [I] would have loved to have been that little bit quicker. I certainly hope so, I think normally our race pace is a bit better – we’ve struggled the whole year with our Quali pace, especially when it’s close and it’s been close today. That’s why I would say I’m not surprised, but we have more hopes for the race that we can get back ahead.”
Piastri: “In quite a few places, I think. A pretty scruffy lap, to be honest. Just didn’t really get it together, so in some ways I feel a bit fortunate to be third. I think the pace in the car is good – it’s nothing major, it’s not like it’s been a disastrous day at all. It’s just been a little bit of a messy lap that I can hopefully tidy up for tomorrow. We’ll see what happens at the start. If I can get a good launch and try and put myself in the right spot – knowing where the right spot is in Turn 1 here is often tricky, so we’ll see what happens up ahead.”
Leclerc: “Everywhere. My lap was clean in SQ3, I don’t regret much [of] what I’ve done in my lap. Maybe [with] a little bit more mileage this morning on the medium [tyre], you can fine-tune the car a little bit better – there might be a tenth in that or a tenth and a half, I don’t know. But it’s not enough – we are so far behind now. I’ll be very surprised if we found something that will make us [take] such a jump. I hope I’m wrong, but unfortunately for now it just seems like it’s the potential of our car.
“It’s very surprising the teams that are strong this weekend, apart from obviously the McLaren and the Red Bull which is expected, but you’ve got Nico in front [in P4] that has done probably an amazing lap but he’s been consistently fast this weekend, so we just need to understand if they understood something that we didn’t, but today was a very poor day.”
Antonelli: “It is disappointing to get knocked out in SQ2 and by such a small margin too. I felt good in the car in SQ1 and only needed the one lap to get through. I had two big lock-ups on my final lap in SQ2 though and that ultimately cost me. We definitely had the pace to get into SQ3 and fight for the top five, so it is frustrating. We will reset overnight though, push as hard as we can in the Sprint and then try to have a better qualifying tomorrow afternoon.
“Our long run pace in FP1 was more encouraging than our single lap work. Hopefully that bodes well for Sunday. We know that we won’t be able to show that though if we don’t start near the front of the field. We will work hard to improve the car ahead of qualifying, using the Sprint to build our learning, and try our best to have a better session than we’ve just enjoyed.”
Tsunoda: “I don’t know. We have to look into it. It’s very frustrating, because I got out with…it’s not in my control. We can control, but it’s more up to them rather than myself managing the timings. It’s pretty shocking. It’s just more like his usual. I expect nothing more than that from him, to be honest. It’s more like just the timing of the garage exit was not even close. I don’t know what’s happened there. Something went wrong, and I didn’t have an opportunity to do the lap time, so it’s a shame.”
As noted above, it was a supreme show from Hulkenberg to end up inside the Top 4 after a fine run, but teammate Gabriel Bortoleto was left frustrated after he was unable to set a timed lap at all. The joy for the German was shared by Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and the Williams F1 pair.
The Spaniard along with Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon also made it in the Top 10 in a good show. But Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll was out in SQ2 after he couldn’t get a lap in. The disappointment was shared by Visa Cash App RB F1 pair after both were out in SQ2.
Liam Lawson had his lap time deleted due to track limits, while the strategy to go out late didn’t work for Isack Hadjar. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was happy to make it in SQ2, but Franco Colapinto struggled to get things right to be out in SQ1 along with Haas F1 pair of Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon.
Hulkenberg: “I’m really satisfied with how things went today. We looked strong from the start in P1, and it was nice to see that performance carry through. The car felt good: it was in a great window, right in the sweet spot, and the lap times backed that up. I enjoy driving around this track; it’s good fun and quite rewarding when everything clicks. The sprint will be challenging with plenty of quick cars around us, but we’ll fight hard and try to turn this momentum into a strong result.”
Alonso: “I’m happy with P6 today. It’s one of our better qualifying sessions of the season and we put together some good laps. It felt like we really maximised the opportunity, but we do have some fast cars starting behind us, so we’ll see if we can score points in the Sprint tomorrow.”
Sainz: “It’s encouraging to be P7 in Sprint qualifying, especially with the little track action I’ve had today after missing most of FP1. Considering the circumstances, I’m happy with my laps on both compounds and I’ll do my best to grab some points in the Sprint race. We’ll also take the learnings for tomorrow’s main qualifying and hopefully we can repeat or improve today’s result.”
Hadjar: “I had a good feeling at the end of FP1, but in that session it felt completely different. In SQ1, I managed to put a lap together to get the car through and it felt quite competitive. I expected to make a good step in SQ2, but we committed to a single push lap and the car was very difficult to drive, it was quite challenging out there. I still think we’re fast, and tomorrow is all about maximising everything and putting it all together. Starting from 12th will make it tough to score points, but we’ll push hard and aim for Q3 in Qualifying.”
Gasly: “I’m actually quite pleased with today’s result in Sprint Qualifying. The last few weekends have been tricky for us and we have not really been in the mix with our competitors. The team has worked really hard in the week between Singapore and here to find some improvements and it was important to find more performance to put ourselves back in the mix, which I feel we have done today.
“We always want more than what we achieved today but, looking at the work everyone has put in, we can be pleased as we have a good baseline to work from for the rest of this weekend. Tomorrow for the Sprint, we need to try and maximise the start and gain some places and see where we end up. It is a tricky track and we will just take one session at a time and try to maximise what we have every time we are on track.”
Bearman: “Sprint Quali today was a big shame. This morning I felt pretty happy with the car, but in qualifying I only got one lap, and I’m still learning the track, so that lap wasn’t my best, but I wasn’t expecting that lap to be my best. That’s why in SQ1 you have two laps to at least get a feeling of the car. I put the update on in between sessions, so a lot of things changed. We’ll need to review why we didn’t make it around in time, but there was no point in pushing flat out to make it as my tires would’ve been gone.”
Bortoleto: “Unfortunately, I don’t have much to say about today. My first timed lap was cancelled due to track limits, and the second attempt was unfortunately not enough to make the cut. It’s obviously disappointing, especially since our car felt quite good earlier today during free practice. Looking at tomorrow, we’ll use the Sprint as an extra chance to learn something more about this track and how our car behaves here, before putting our focus on delivering in Qualifying ahead of the main Race.”
Here’s how F1 US GP sprint qualifying panned out
