Verstappen beats Alonso to pole in damp qualifying

Rain falling throughout the day in Montreal meant qualifying took place in similar wet conditions to FP3 earlier on Saturday afternoon, which Alonso led.

The Alpine driver stunned Sainz to slot into second with the final timed lap of Q3 – where all the drivers were fuelled to run for the whole session to take advantage of the track drying and the tyres being worked into the optimum working range.

Verstappen was untouchable out front, leading from the off in Q3 and he worked the pole benchmark down to a 1m21.299s.

Sainz had looked like he could run Verstappen close after setting the quickest first sector on his final lap, but while he stayed in contention despite losing a fraction in the middle sector, a big slide exiting the final corner meant he dropped enough time for Alonso to get in ahead of his fellow Spaniard a few moments later.

Lewis Hamilton took fourth for Mercedes, which split its strategy late in Q3 by fitting softs to George Russell’s car – a decision that backfired when the Briton spun at the opening corners on his first lap on the slicks.

Russell dropped from the leading positions to eighth by the end of Q3, with Haas duo Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher leading in pushing the Briton down by taking fifth and sixth.

Then came Esteban Ocon, while Daniel Ricciardo and Zhou Guanyu rounded out the top 10.

Zhou is one of several drivers to face a post-session investigation for their driving during a slew of off-track moments throughout qualifying or trying to find space in the traffic during the earlier segments.

Q2 began with the drivers split over staying on the full wets used throughout Q1 or switching to the intermediates, with Alonso using that compound the lead the way early on in that segment, just before Sergio Perez caused a red flag going off into the barriers at the Turns 3/4 chicane.

The Red Bull driver was also on the inters, but locked his right front and after snatching the other front brake he slid across the grass and quickly went head on into the barriers.

Although his car did not appear to be massively damaged, Perez took a long time to engage reverse and when he did he was unable to move backwards as his nose was buried in the barriers so was instructed to switch off his engine, with the barriers then needing to be rearranged once his car had been craned away minus its front wing.

When the session restarted after a 12-minute delay, all the remaining drivers headed back on the inters,…