Sergio Perez secured pole position for the Miami Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc crashed in the final lap of qualifying, leaving Max Verstappen down in ninth place.
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix winner set the provisional pole time on his first Q3 run as team mate Verstappen abandoned his lap after an error. Leclerc spun out in the final minutes, bringing out a red flag that ended the session, dooming Verstappen to ninth place. Fernando Alonso will start second on the grid, with Carlos Sainz Jnr third for Ferrari.
Q1
Despite pre-event forecasts of rain, sunny skies greeted the drivers as the first phase of qualifying began in Miami. Valtteri Bottas set the initial pace with a 1’29.358, but Kevin Magnussen put his Haas on top with a time half a second quicker.
Verstappen headed out to post his first time on the soft tyres, going easily quickest, but was beaten by team mate Sergio Perez by a tenth of a second. Charles Leclerc put his Ferrari into second with his first flying lap of the session, with Fernando Alonso fourth in the Aston Martin.
Lewis Hamilton hit trouble on his first lap of the session, running wide at the hairpin on his first flying lap. Then on his in-lap, he almost collided with Magussen’s Haas on the way into the same hairpin, the Mercedes clipping the wall on the right hand side. The stewards announced they would investigate the incident after qualifying.
Verstappen returned to the top of the times with an improvement on his next lap, setting the fastest time of the weekend so far. Carlos Sainz Jnr moved into second in his Ferrari, less than a tenth quicker than Perez in third.
Heading into the final five minutes of the session, both Hamilton and Mercedes team mate George Russell found themselves in danger of elimination and needed to make their final flying laps count. Also in danger were the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, with Logan Sargeant the final car set to be eliminated.
As the chequered flag flew, both Mercedes duly secured passage into Q2 by moving out of the drop zone, which dropped Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll into elimination. The former was beaten by his team mate Nyck de Vries for the first time in a qualifying session this year.
Both McLarens also improved on their own times but failed to get out of the bottom five. Lando Norris fell short by just seven-hundredths of a second, and was told to sit tight in his car while his team checked none of his rivals had breached track limits, but nothing came of it….
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