Max Verstappen was in a different league in the sprint shootout qualifying by setting the quickest lap time in each segment. The defending world champion ended up with pole for the sprint race just beating Oscar Piastri in the McLaren.
The two Ferrari drivers ended up in third and fourth with Carlos Sainz ahead, while Charles Leclerc made a small error on his final Q3 lap that proved costly in the fight for pole.
The shootout session was delayed by 35 minutes due to rain yet again this weekend, with the precipitation falling particularly hardly in the hour ahead of the sprint qualifying.
In Q3, Lewis Hamilton led after the first runs, where some drivers, including Sergio Perez, took an alternative approach of putting in an extra preparation lap.
The Red Bull driver, therefore, headed the times before being shuffled back to eighth, while Hamilton ended up improving only enough for seventh on his second flier after an apparent miscommunication with his teammate George Russell meant the Mercedes appeared to get in each other’s way going up the Eau Rouge/Raidillon sequence up to the Les Combes chicane.
Leclerc was well in the hunt for pole as he set the quickest times in sectors one and three on his second Q3 softs flier, but a slip that nearly had him off the road at Turn 9 cost him so much time he ended up unable to beat Sainz’s one minute, 49.081 seconds that was good enough for third.
Both were then beaten by a late stunner from Piastri that featured the best time in the middle sector, before the McLaren driver was beaten by Verstappen completing the final flying lap of all in the session that sets the grid for Saturday’s sprint race.
Although the world champion registered no purple sectors on his final lap, he still had enough consistency to post the best time of all at one minute, 49.056 seconds.
Lando Norris took sixth ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who also deployed the double warm-up tour approach in Q3.
Esteban Ocon was ninth ahead of Russell, who had also scraped through Q1 and Q2 on the edge of elimination in P15 and P10 in the opening segment.
George’s mistake at La Source on his final Q3 run – he locked up and ran deep – left him running ahead of Hamilton and the rest of the incident that appeared to cost the seven-time world champion a better shot on his own last effort.
Before this, Q2 was building towards its conclusion when attention turned to Stroll being the first driver to attempt to slicks – the Canadian pitting to change his inters for mediums.
He was 0.8 seconds down on Verstappen’s segment-topping time by the end of the first sector, where most of the track did have a dry line, but when he arrived at the still-wet Turns 8 and 9 – the long, slow right hander at the bottom of the first plunge off the track’s main hill and the 90-degree left that heads towards Pouhon – it all went wrong.
Despite being very cautious on his approach to Turn 9, Stroll lost the rear of his Aston and slid across the gravel into the barriers, knocking off his right-front wheel.
The red flags then flew and prevented any improvement, which eliminated early Q2 leader Daniel Ricciardo and the Williams pair Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant, who spun coming out of the second part of Stavelot a few minutes before Stroll’s crash, in P11, P12 and P13.
Neither Williams pair set a time, with Albon being credited ahead because of his position ahead of Sargeant on what was set to be his sole timed tour, while he was caught out by Stroll’s crash having remained in the garage for most of Q2.
Albon, and Fernando Alonso were finally on out-laps on their mediums having waited a long time seemingly in an effort to discover if a slicks attempt was possible, when the incident occurred and so they were knocked out too.
Stroll pitting for meant he also lacked a timed lap on the inters, but he ended up ahead of his frustrated birthday-celebrating teammate again while Alonso was still on his out-lap.
In Q1, which Verstappen topped as the times fell over four seconds from Hamilton’s initial two minutes, 02.297 seconds, Yuki Tsunoda set a personal best on his final effort but could not do better than P16 with many others finding time behind the AlphaTauri.
Valtteri Bottas was not one of these as he finished his final flier well ahead of the dash for the flag, with the Alfa Romeo driver heading for the pits as his rivals ended the opening segment and he only recorded P17.
Kevin Magnussen was the lead Haas driver in a very different session for the American team, with K-Mag and teammate Nico Hulkenberg bucking the trend of circulating throughout the 12-minute segment and twice pitting for fresh inters.
This meant neither had a time on the board ahead of the final laps and with Hulkenberg delayed a few seconds leaving the pits for the third time by a jack being left near his car following his second inters change, he ran out of time and did not even get to attempt a flier.
That left Hulkenberg last behind Zhou Guanyu, but Magnussen could only manage P18 just ahead of that pair with his sole time lap, despite completing the same number of laps in Q1, as Verstappen.
Q1 also featured an incident where Verstappen had to go along away around Hamilton going slower on the racing line being noted for a possible impeding infraction, but the stewards decided no further action was necessary.
So congratulations to Max Verstappen with this sprint pole and yet it was so close for Oscar Piastri. The McLaren driver missed out by 0.011 seconds but he will start on the front row for the sprint race later.
Belgian Grand Prix, sprint shootout results:
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:49.056
2 Oscar Piastri McLaren 1:49.067
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 1:49.081
4 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:49.251
5 Lando Norris McLaren 1:49.389
6 Pierre Gasly Alpine 1:49.700
7 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:49.900
8 Sergio Perez Red Bull 1:49.961
9 Esteban Ocon Alpine 1:50.494
10 George Russell Mercedes 1:55.742
11 Daniel Ricciardo AlphaTauri 1:57.687
12 Alexander Albon Williams No time
13 Logan Sargeant Williams No time
14 Lance Stroll Aston Martin No time
15 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin No time
16 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri 2:00.568
17 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo 2:00.951
18 Kevin Magnussen Haas 2:01.079
19 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo 2:01.430
20 Nico Hulkenberg Haas No time
Belgian Grand Prix sprint shootout review as reported by Formula1.com.
Max Verstappen was once again at his scintillating best as the Red Bull driver narrowly beat the McLaren of Oscar Piastri and the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz to take pole position for today’s Belgian GP Sprint at an extraordinary wet/dry Sprint Shootout at Spa-Francorchamps.
Verstappen left it late, after taking the chequered flag with just four seconds to spare to set off on his final flying lap in SQ3. But the Red Bull driver went straight to the top of the timesheets with a time of 1m 49.056s.
Lando Norris wound up fifth for McLaren, with Pierre Gasly sixth for Alpine, ahead of the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, who encountered traffic in the form of his team mate George Russell on his final attempt in SQ3. Sergio Perez was eighth, ahead of the other Alpine of Esteban Ocon, with Russell in 10th.
Daniel Ricciardo was one of the drivers to suffer after Lance Stroll crashed in the closing stages of SQ2 and brought out red flags, meaning the Australian missed out on a chance to progress to SQ3. He will start 11th, ahead of the Williams pair of Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant, who failed to set a time.
Stroll’s off meant he and his team mate, Fernando Alonso, also could not get a lap in during SQ2, leaving them 14th and 15th, respectively. However the off also left Stroll’s mechanics with a substantial repair job ahead of the Sprint later today.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.verstappen-claims-pole-in-wet-dry-spa-sprint-shootout-by-0-011s-from-piastri.PQGFwKSeZKhgYtqfKgtNP.html
George Russell admitted his sprint shootout at Formula 1’s Belgian Grand Prix was “a total mess from start to finish” as he and Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton got in each other’s way.
On a drying Spa-Francorchamps circuit timing the final flyer to perfection was of the essence, with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly the first of four drivers to claim provisional pole until Red Bull’s Max Verstappen pipped McLaren prodigy Oscar Piastri to the top of the timesheets.
Mercedes appeared to have misjudged its drivers’ positioning to start the final lap, with Russell hindering Hamilton after locking up his tyres into Turn 1.
Hamilton then passed Russell on the Kemmel straight, but not before he had to back out of the throttle and see his final lap ruined as well as Russell’s.
It meant Hamilton was bumped down to seventh, with Russell abandoning his lap and starting Saturday afternoon’s sprint race from 10th.
Afterwards Russell blaming poor communication for his close encounter with Hamilton, while also admitting he had been off his game throughout the session.
“It was a total mess from start to finish to be honest,” Russel told F1 TV.
“I was surprised I got to Q3 because [there were] so many mistakes from my side and a bit of miscommunication at the end. I was too close to the car in front, Lewis was too close to me.
“We thought we weren’t going to make the lap because the clock was running down. But there was definitely more time on the clock than we foresaw, because I think Max was the last car to cross the line.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/russell-spa-f1-sprint-shootout-a-total-mess-for-mercedes/10501719/
Oscar Piastri expressed mixed emotions after qualifying for the Sprint Shootout at the Belgian Grand Prix, having been narrowly beaten to top spot by Max Verstappen.
Piastri and McLaren displayed rapid pace in another wet-dry session at Spa-Francorchamps, mixing it for pole position but missing out to the Red Bull driver by just 0.011s.
Giving his initial reaction to the session, and the fine margins involved, Piastri said: “You can lose that much time and about a hundred times that very easily, so I was very happy with my lap – I thought I did a good job.
“Of course, there’s always points in the lap where you think I could have gained 11 thousandths, but it’s still been a very good session. Our car really likes it when it’s like that, clearly; we were good yesterday in Q2 when it was like that.”
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.its-amazing-to-be-disappointed-piastri-reacts-to-missing-out-on-sprint.2wkIMRyIZfroPpZ2hOqtF4.html
Formula 1 teams were surprised by a late FIA decision on tyre usage for the Spa sprint shootout that contradicted the scenario that they expected to unfold.
It obliged Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll to switch from intermediates to medium rather than soft tyres on a drying track, with the Canadian subsequently crashing heavily on his final lap.
Under sprint shootout rules, drivers are obliged to use medium tyres in SQ1 and SQ2, then softs in SQ3.
However the rules also state that if the track is declared wet by the FIA those rules won’t apply, and drivers can use any set of dry tyres through the three sessions.
The relevant regulation reads: “If any of the periods SQ1, SQ2 or SQ3 gets declared wet, the specification, mileage or number of dry-weather tyres that may be used in the remainder of the sprint shootout will be free.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-teams-surprised-by-fias-spa-shootout-tyre-call/10501747/