Sainz beats Verstappen and Leclerc to take his first pole at wet Silverstone · RaceFans

Carlos Sainz Jnr took his maiden Formula 1 pole position at the end of a wet qualifying session for the British Grand Prix.

Sainz made the best of his final qualifying lap as team mate Charles Leclerc spun at Chapel on his last effort to beat Max Verstappen to pole position. Leclerc will start third on the grid, while Sergio Perez will start fourth in the second Red Bull.

Q1

Less than ten minutes before the green light at the end of the pit lane signalled the start of qualifying, the rain that had threatened to arrived finally began falling around the circuit.

A queue of cars left the pit lane on intermediate tyres, with big rooster tails of spray protruding from cars as the drivers sought out the grip around the circuit. Max Verstappen was immediately quickest with a 1’45.743, before Charles Leclerc went over two seconds quicker to replace his rival at the top of the times.

The tricky conditions understandably created challenges for drivers. Valtteri Bottas spun at Vale corner on his first timed lap but managed to continue on his way after a brief yellow flag.

With around eight minutes of the session remaining, Lando Norris was warned that no further rain was expected for the remainder of Q1, opening up the possibility of the track drying out and improving in the final minutes. George Russell improved to go fastest overall, but he was quickly beaten by both Charles Leclerc and then Verstappen.

With five minutes of Q1 remaining, the drop zone consisted of the two Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, with Yuki Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Schumacher also at risk of elimination.

Vettel improved to move out of danger into tenth, before Tsunoda also got himself into safe by jumping up to ninth. That moved Pierre Gasly and Nicholas Latifi into the drop zone. Ricciardo improved out of the drop zone into 13th, dropping Kevin Magnussen into the danger zone, while Latifi also moved into 11th, putting Tsunoda back into risk of elimination.

As time expired, Vettel improved to 15th, but was the first driver to take the chequered flag and powerless to prevent Gasly knocking him out, to the Aston Martin driver’s frustration. His team mate Stroll was eliminated in 20th and last, while the two Haas also could not do enough and were both knocked out in the bottom five.

Latifi managed to just avoid elimination in 15th to progress into Q2 for the first time this season. That came at the expense of team mate Alex Albon, who was 16th in the heavily revised…