World champion Max Verstappen has secured pole position ahead of Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez for the opening round of the Formula 1 season in Bahrain.
Verstappen improved on his own provisional pole time on his final attempt of the session to beat Perez to pole by a tenth of a second. The Red Bulls were the only cars to breach the 1’30 barrier, with the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr occupying the second row. Fernando Alonso will start fifth for Aston Martin.
Q1
The first truly competitive session of the 2023 Formula 1 season began under the lights with track temperature hovering just below 30C and slowly dropping. The two AlphaTauris of Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries were first to join the track, quickly followed by the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr.
But as Leclerc exited the final corner to begin his first qualifying lap of the season, part of a wheel arch on his SF-23 flew off along the pit straight. Leclerc immediately locked up under braking for the first corner and abandoned his run. Around a minute later, the session was red flagged to recover “several pieces of debris” on the circuit.
After a brief delay, the session restarted and all 20 cars swiftly took to the track. Tsunoda held the early top spot with the first flying lap of the season with a 1’32.124, but that was quickly beaten by the majority of the field.
Unexpectedly, it wasn’t the Aston Martin and Red Bull drivers who headed the times at this early stage. After each driver had set their first representative laps, Sainz was quickest for Ferrari, just over half a tenth ahead of George Russell’s Mercedes and Leclerc third in the second Ferrari.
Lance Stroll’s first lap time was deleted for breaching track limits at turn 13, dropping him to the back of the field, the only driver not to be credited with a lap time. As the field all returned to the pits after their first runs, the drop zone consisted of Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas, the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant’s Williams and Stroll in 20th.
As the minutes ticked down, the entire field peeled out of the pit lane for a second run, aside for Sainz on top of the times. Red Bull chose to send both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez out on fresh soft tyres, while Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin opted to stay on used softs.
Stroll successfully completed a legitimate lap time to move comfortably safe up in fifth, as did Hulkenberg on his return to Formula 1. It…
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