Sainz snatches pole while Leclerc’s penalty promotes Verstappen to second · RaceFans

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jnr secured his third career pole position at the United States Grand Prix, beating team mate Charles Leclerc who will start 12th after a power unit penalty.

Sainz pipped Leclerc by less than a tenth of a second, with Max Verstappen taking third which will become second on the grid with Leclerc’s penalty.

Sergio Perez will also drop down the starting order due to a penalty, promoting the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton to third on the grid alongside his team mate.

Q1

The Circuit of the Americas was warm and windy with hundreds of thousands of fans packing the grandstands at the start of the first phase of qualifying. However with wind speeds of over 23km/h around the circuit, the 20 drivers faced an extra degree of difficulty as the session began.

Charles Leclerc headed out for the first time in the knowledge that he will start the race up to 10 places further down from where he qualifies after a power unit penalty. That did not deter him from setting the early fastest lap with a 1’35.795, less than a tenth of a second faster than Max Verstappen. The two-times world champion complained about a slow Haas on the racing line, belonging to Kevin Magnussen, as he rounded the fast multi-apex corner of turns 16-17-18.

Alexander Albon was upset to exit turn one a flying lap to find Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes in the middle of the track as he went past and complained about the Mercedes driver over the radio. Zhou Guanyu had his best lap time deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 12 at the end of the back straight, but insisted that he had remained inside the lines.

That lap time deletion meant Zhou sat at the bottom of the order in 20th as the cars ventured out of the garage for the last time. Kevin Magnussen, Daniel Ricciardo, Albon and Yuki Tsunoda were also at risk of being eliminated if they did not improve on their final runs.

Tsunoda’s final lap was not the neatest, but he still moved up into the top 10, which pushed Nicholas Latifi down into the drop zone with Esteban Ocon on the bubble. Zhou put in a strong final lap to move safe, but Magnussen was eliminated after losing what he estimated was “two tenths” through the first corner. His Haas team mate Mick Schumacher fell into the drop zone and his fate was sealed when he spun around at the same turn.

Ocon and Ricciardo both did not improve by enough to so safe and were out, as Albon jumped up into 15th place, narrowly getting through to Q2 with his final lap. Latifi was the…