In a final qualifying session where the soft tyres were good for just a single flying lap – unlike the multiple fliers seen last week in Las Vegas – Lewis Hamilton was also knocked out in Q2 for Mercedes and Sergio Perez rued a track limits mistake in the other RB19.
In Q3, Verstappen put in a 1m23.445s on his first of two runs, with the world champion well clear of the rest at this stage as he was the only one to use new tyres.
On the second runs, Verstappen ran at the rear of the group of leaders to this point, but was unable to improve his time.
The rest did, but not by enough, with Leclerc going from just over a second off after the first Q3 runs to shoot up to second on his final attempt – ending up 0.139s to Verstappen.
Piastri took third ahead of George Russell, who climbed the order with Q3’s quickest time in the final sector to rise to fourth.
Lando Norris had looked like Verstappen’s biggest threat but he blew his shot with the new tyres right at the end due to a massive sideways moment at Turn 13 which cost the Briton 0.4s in the lap’s final third alone.
Then came Yuki Tsunoda, Fernando Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg, while Pierre Gasly rounded out the top 10.
Perez’s final lap was good enough for sixth but he lost it for running too wide out of Turn 1, where he had had a wild sideways moment on the first Q3 attempts.
Verstappen traversed Q2 with just a single run on new softs, while the rest took a sighter on used softs at the start of the middle segment.
Come the end with everybody bar Verstappen out on new softs, Russell’s improvement eliminated his Mercedes team-mate Hamilton, who complained on his way back to the pits, “There’s something wrong with this car”.
Then came Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Alex Albon and Daniel Ricciardo, with Albon having run off-set for his second run and completed his final flier well ahead of the rest – just as Williams had done at the end of the opening segment.
In Q1, where the entire field was covered by one-second, Perez’s last-gasp improvement moved him through in second behind Verstappen, knocking out Carlos Sainz along with Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu and Logan Sargeant.
The first four completed personal best efforts on their second and final fliers, with Sainz complaining about traffic impacting his last run, but Sargeant lost both his Q1 times for running beyond track limits at Turn 1.
His best of those two laps was his first, but that still would…
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