RED Bull’s championship leader Max Verstappen flew to pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz joining him on the front row after a dramatic qualifying.
Verstappen was nearly half a second clear of the Spaniard and so good was his first lap in the final phase that he aborted the second once it became clear nobody else was going to beat him.
“The car was on rails,” said the happy Dutch driver, who took his first Formula One win at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya in 2016 and also triumphed last year.
“It was really enjoyable to drive today.”
Sainz gave the fans plenty to cheer, and said he had left nothing on the table, while McLaren’s Lando Norris qualified third.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was fourth fastest but stewards handed him two three-place penalties for unnecessarily impeding Verstappen and Sainz that dropped the Frenchman to 10th.
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s closest title rival but 39 points behind after six races, will start 11th after a trip into the gravel while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc ended up a shock 19th on the grid.
Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton was fifth fastest, after looking a front row contender, but will start fourth on the grid for Mercedes.
Seven different teams filled the top seven positions, with Canadian Lance Stroll promoted to fifth and ahead of eighth-placed Aston Martin team mate Fernando Alonso for the first time this season.
Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, third in Monaco last Sunday, will start sixth with Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg seventh and McLaren’s Australian rookie Oscar Piastri ninth.
The big shock after a first phase red-flagged due to gravel on the slippery track was provided by last year’s pole-sitter Leclerc ending up on the back row.
“Unbelievable,” said the Ferrari driver, who had complained earlier about a problem with his rear tyres, when his engineer confirmed the result.
Perez used the same word after the Mexican failed to make the cut for the top-10 shootout, having just scraped through the first phase.
Mercedes’s George Russell was another casualty of the second phase, ending up 12th after also colliding with Hamilton at the end in a bizarre clash that drew the attention of the stewards.
“George just backed off,” said Hamilton over the radio. “That’s really dangerous.” Mercedes blamed the incident on a miscommunication, with Russell apologising and Hamilton requiring a new front wing for the final phase.
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