Yahoo Autos Piastri wins McLaren duel for Sao Paulo Sprint pole
Oscar Piastri beat teammate Lando Norris to pole for the Sao Paulo Sprint to set up an all-McLaren front row for Saturday’s 100-kilometer race at the Interlagos circuit.
Norris had looked primed to dominate the session, having rocketed to top spot in SQ2 on the medium tire and blitzing Piastri to top spot after both drivers set their first laps in SQ3. But McLaren unusually prepared both drivers to set two laps, albeit with the same used tires, in the eight-minute segment when ordinarily drivers complete just one.
Piastri was faultless in his second attempt, moving to top spot by just 0.029s and piling pressure on his teammate to improve. Norris matched him in the first sector but couldn’t improve in the second, abandoning the lap and handing the advantage to his teammate.
With no other team in McLaren’s league in the first competitive session of the weekend, Piastri claimed his second career sprint pole.
“I felt pretty comfortable at the start, and the grip was really coming up a lot through the session,” he said. “My first lap didn’t feel amazing, and I knew that there were a few places to improve. The second lap was good, and the tires hung on. I’m very, very happy and excited to be starting from P1.”
Charles Leclerc slotted into third for Ferrari but was a quarter of a second off the pace.
Max Verstappen improved late but struggled for balance as track grip improved, leaving him fourth and 0.32s off the pace. Carlos Sainz followed 0.038s further back.
Sixth was the best Mercedes could manage, with George Russell 0.544s off pole.
Pierre Gasly was seventh ahead of Liam Lawson — who made the first top-10 Sprint qualifying appearance of his career –and Alex Albon.
Oliver Bearman, standing in for the ill Kevin Magnussen, was 10th without a time in his first career Sprint qualifying session after having his best lap deleted for track limits.
Lewis Hamilton was 0.097s short of a spot in SQ3, leaving him 11th on the Sprint grid ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in the second Haas.
Sergio Perez was the segment’s other shock elimination, qualifying 13th. The Mexican, who has a new chassis this weekend in a bid to unpick his poor form, had set too slow a lap with his first run but was then too slow getting back onto the track for his second attempt in this shortened qualifying format, rendering him unable to improve.
Franco Colapinto will line up 14th ahead of Stake Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas in 15th — his team’s best Sprint qualifying result since both cars made the top 10 in China.
Fernando Alonso will line up 16th, Aston Martin’s upgrade rollback proving inconclusive in solving the team’s recent woes. Teammate Lance Stroll in 19th was similarly unlikely to instill much confidence with the previous-spec parts.
Splitting the green pair was Esteban Ocon in 17th and a surprised Yuki Tsunoda in 18th, who complained of having no grip on his final lap.
Zhou Guanyu will start the Sprint last, having qualified 1.698s off the back of the pack.
