Max Verstappen narrowly beat the Ferrari drivers to pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.
But the Red Bull driver, who can win the world championship tomorrow, has been summoned by the stewards following an incident with Lando Norris. The McLaren driver ran onto the grass to prevent himself hitting the eventual pole-winner as the pair prepared to start their first flying laps in Q3.
In a tight qualifying session, Verstappen beat Charles Leclerc to pole by just one-hundredth of a second, with Carlos Sainz Jnr taking third.
Q1
It was a quiet start to the first phase of qualifying, with only a handful of cars taking to the circuit when the session began at the top of the hour. Appropriately enough, the first driver to set a lap time was the Japanese driver, Yuki Tsunoda. He posted a 1’31.631 to beat team mate Pierre Gasly by four tenths and earn a polite round of applause from the fans in the grandstands.
Lando Norris navigated through traffic in the middle sector to move ahead of the AlphaTauris at the top of the times by two tenths. Then the two Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell completed their first flying laps on the medium compound tyres – the only drivers eschewing softs for their run.
Max Verstappen opted for the softs and instantly went quickest with a 1’30.224, almost four tenths quicker than team mate Sergio Perez. Then the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz Jnr and Charles Leclerc posted their first times of qualifying, with the pair splitting the two Red Bulls with Sainz second and Leclerc in third.
After their first laps on the medium tyres, both Hamilton and Russell were both in need of improvements to their times in order to avoid being in danger of elimination. With under five minutes to go, the pair headed out on soft tyres with the track virtually to themselves and promptly improved to both move inside the top ten.
That left Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen, Sebastian Vettel and the two Williams of Nicholas Latifi and Alexander Albon sitting in the drop zone as drivers prepared for their final laps of the session.
Latifi improved, but not by enough to progress into Q2. Vettel and Zhou both put in better laps to move safe, which knocked Magnussen and Lance Stroll into the drop zone and out. Pierre Gasly, who complained about “massive pulling” when he hit the brakes, made a mistake at the hairpin which also sealed his fate in the AlphaTauri. “It’s a joke,” he fumed further around his lap. Albon narrowly missed…
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