The Saturday in F1 Abu Dhabi GP was as dramatic as expected with Red Bull acing on pole side but strategy wise going behind Mercedes.

The Saturday in F1 Abu Dhabi GP ended up being dramatic as expected with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen taking crucial pole with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton second but the pair will start on different compounds where the former is on the soft and latter on medium.

What looked like a change of strategy was eventually a forced change for Verstappen after he locked-up his tyres in Q2. Red Bull didn’t wished to risk their race due to the lock-up as Christian Horner noted that they were 50-50 on the strategy but the lock-up confirmed soft.

Their tow, though, was discussed and to happen in Q3 where Sergio Perez did his part. It was also their first time of doing it without any practice in FP3. The Mexican was happy to help, even though he was disappointed to be pipped by Lando Norris in the end.

Mercedes did not discuss tow on their side but Valtteri Bottas is ready to sacrifice his F1 race on Sunday to help Hamilton and Mercedes. The Finn also noted that they switched to an older power unit because they thought it was more reliable than the other.

Verstappen: “So far our weekend has been a bit on and off in terms of balance but I think for qualifying we made the right decisions and as I soon as I went in to qualifying I had a bit of a better feeling. Nevertheless, Q1, not perfect, still need to fine tune a couple of things. From Q2 onwards it was a bit better. But of course in Q2 I had my flat spot on the mediums so I had to go out on the Soft again. Then in Q3, basically, both laps, the last lap until 13, I was more or less on the same lap time so, yeah, the car felt pretty decent in these final two laps.

“For sure on that first run it was very nice and then on my second run I had a very good exit out of 7 so I actually didn’t even lose time on that straight on my own, just with the following the cars, but for sure for that first run it was a nice tow. The idea was discussed before quali. So yeah, it was very nice, nicely executed as well but, I’m mean, it’s not… whatever the gap was. I might have gained a tenth towards Turn 9.

“It’s not a massively long straight but nevertheless, Checo’s a great team-mate and a real pleasure to work with, so of course, also a big thank you to him. And naturally, the idea wasn’t to start on softs because I wanted to try to start on the medium but I flat-spotted that one. But I felt good yesterday as well on the long run on the Soft. So it was not a difficult decision to make to say. “OK, we will focus on the Softs.”

Hamilton: “The car was good. Max did a great job on that final lap. Generally, through practice, P3 at least and into qualifying, the car was feeling solid. Through the qualifying session it felt like it got a bit harder to try to gain speed, and the last two laps weren’t easy to really pull out the time. I don’t know if it’s track temp or what – but the last lap was OK. Definitely can’t complain but, of course, we wish we would be a bit quicker today.

For the strategy difference, I’m always kind of sceptical with everything, so it’ll be interesting when we go back and look at the information and onboard laps. It’s very rare that people lock-up in Turn 1 but if he truly did lock-up in Turn 1 then maybe whether or not we’ll be in the better position in terms of that tyre or maybe they know something we don’t and that Soft tyre was their plan all the time. We struggled, I think, a little bit more on the Soft tyre for long runs, so I think we’ve got the right tyre but I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

“Regarding the tow, for us, I’d like Valtteri to focus on getting his… we work as a team in terms of Valtteri needed to get the best job done for himself, so that we can have both of us up as high as possible. So, it’s never something that we discuss, or we work on. I don’t believe that we should have either. And about the boos, there’s a lot of orange here, so… Yeah, I think you’re always surprised by the boos, no matter how many times you experience it. But I don’t care, it doesn’t make no difference to me if it was a cheer or if it was a boo, makes no difference to how I go about my life, so it doesn’t affect me. If anything I use that as fuel so I’m grateful for it, one way or another.”

Bottas: “In Q2, I think I did my best laptime and I could never improve that. It felt like the more I tried, it felt like the set-up didn’t have any more in it. I went for a quite soft set-up mechanically and I feel it’s really good for the race, and I was hoping it should still be OK for the quali. But the grip was improving quite a lot. so that’s one thing. We had to change to an older PU for today, which I knew that it was, compared to yesterday, at least two tenths. We feel more confident with this PU for the reliability. For the race, at least make sure I don’t lose positions on the start, that’s number one. I need to be patient and play the long game because I can go long if I want to in the first stint. It’s important to get the points, not to destroy the car, so I need to be patient, I would say. I’m ready to sacrifice my optimal race because we really want both titles. I want us to get both titles before I go, so I’m definitely going to do my part for both of the titles.”

The best of the rest saw a clear winner in Norris but he is starting on the soft along with his former teammate Carlos Sainz in fifth. The two set a solid lap at the right time to get ahead as Bottas in sixth led the other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc who was not happy with his lap.

The Monegasque lost out in the final sector where he pushed a bit more early on and didn’t have enough left in the end. It was a bit of disappointment on Daniel Ricciardo’s side too in 10th as he just couldn’t get the tyre to run properly and hit a performance limiter much like how Bottas hit the limit and couldn’t improve further.

The AlphaTauri camp had a turnaround for the first time this year as Yuki Tsunoda finally managed to out-qualify Pierre Gasly – that too with the medium tyres – who struggled all-through the weekend. The Japanese made it into the Top 10 but the Frenchman was knocked along with Alpine’s Fernando Alonso who was hugely frustrated due to happenings in Q2 but teammate Esteban Ocon made it inside the Top 10.

Norris: “Massively pleased. Very surprised to be here. Also very happy at the same time, obviously. I think we were confident all weekend that we could get to qualifying and put in a good performance but probably not to be this high up on the grid – so yeah, very happy, especially with my lap I did in Q3. It was definitely just putting it all together. It was a very clean and nice lap. And of course it put me here ahead of the people I want to be ahead of, so… happy. As for the race, I think I’m in the best seat for tomorrow, so I’m very excited to see everything unfold, to see what goes on. I think it’s just a genuine pleasure to be in this position, to see everything that’s been going on this season between Max and Lewis and to watch the battles, to watch the racing because I have a lot of respect for them. Yeah, I’m very happy to be P3, not only because it’s a good position to start but because it gives me the prime position for the view tomorrow.”

Sainz: I needed it after a difficult one in Jeddah where I was very quick but not clever enough to know how to use my speed. It was not an easy qualifying because it was a lot of games going on with outlaps etcetera. But we managed it very well and put together a nice lap in the end. McLaren have been quick all the last half of the season. It’s just they haven’t been putting it together and it looks like Lando is going to do a pretty good job this weekend like he did here last year. It’s a track he likes, it’s a track he always puts some good lap together. We were not that far off in terms of lap times. He must have done a pretty good one because mine was nice. Congrats to him and tomorrow we’ll give him a run.”

Tsunoda: “It’s been a good weekend so far but I’m of course a little frustrated today, it’s such a shame about the track limits in Q3 as I think it was a good lap especially without a tow. My confidence has really returned this weekend and it shows on track, it’s the most confident I’ve felt in the car since the first race in Bahrain, so that’s really positive. I’m really pleased with my Q2 lap and it means I’ll be starting the race on the Mediums, which is a really strong position to be in. It’s definitely a good way to finish the season, with a strong qualifying, and I just have to put it altogether when it counts tomorrow.”

Gasly: “We were just too slow for Q3 today. Since the start of the weekend we’ve struggled, I’ve been losing a lot compared to Yuki and we’ve just not managed to find a solution to this problem. The whole season we’ve been incredible in qualifying, so we need to go away and look at the data to better understand what’s happened today and try to fix it for tomorrow. I will get to choose my starting tyre, which is for sure a positive, and we’ll see what we can do to make our way forward.”

Alonso: “The car felt quite good so it’s a shame to miss out on Q3 after the issues at the end. The out-lap was wild in Q2 and there seemed to be no rules. It reminded me of what happened in Austria where there were penalties given out. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone to referee this. I expect we might climb a few places but let’s see where we start in the end. I am happy that I have the free tyre choice so it gives us the opportunity to play with our strategy a little and score some points tomorrow.”

Outside the Top 10, like Alonso, even Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel was pretty frustrated losing out in the traffic. He already was impeded early on by Ocon and then couldn’t set any decent lap time to be 15th with teammate Lance Stroll 13th.

Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi also lost out in the traffic to not be able to set a lap time on the soft compound as teammate Kimi Raikkonen was knocked out in Q1 after having a moment on his fast lap. Williams’ George Russell lost out in his final run as his tyres weren’t ready as much as Nicholas Latifi managed to out-qualify him while Haas managed to get through qualifying even though Mick Schumacher had the bollard moment.

Vettel: “It was not our day – mainly because of problems with traffic. I was held up by Esteban Ocon in Q1, but just made it through to Q2 where there were even more problems. All the drivers were backing up at the end of the lap and we saw some drivers jumping the queues. I had to come to a standstill and, as a result, I lost too much tyre temperature, which ruined my final quick lap. I should have been more selfish because other drivers do not respect the agreement to stay in order before they start their lap. We all end up at the same place because we try to maximise the sessions [with the same timings] but then you have the same drivers who always jump the queue. So we start from P15 and hopefully we can overtake a lot of cars tomorrow. Our race pace should be competitive so let us see what we can do.”

Raikkonen: “I was on a pretty good lap on my final run of Q1, the time looked good, but I got sideways in Turn 13 and that was it. It’s a pity as the car felt nice. Tomorrow is another day, we start pretty far at the back but we will try to have as good a race as possible and bring home a good result.”

Russell: “The car was feeling great on our flying laps and I was really confident that we could progress into Q2. We went for one push lap at the end and unfortunately, the tyres weren’t quite ready so we didn’t improve our best time and that was a shame. However, the points are scored tomorrow and the most important thing is to secure P8 in the Constructors’ Championship. I believe we can achieve that, but we know it’s not over until it’s over. We will be doing everything we can to finish ahead of Alfa Romeo.”

Schumacher: “The bollard didn’t fancy me, so I decided to take it out and make it fly (laughs). We were trying different things and in that case I just came a bit too close and misjudged by a few centimeters but overall I think that lap wasn’t great so I just tried something and ended up being pretty close to it. Overall, still, I think there was more to gain overall in some other corners so yeah the bollard was the smallest thing.”

Here’s how the F1 Abu Dhabi GP qualifying panned out

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