Verstappen takes Red Bull’s 100th pole as Perez completes front row lock out · RaceFans

Max Verstappenkept his perfect qualifying record in 2024 alive by taking pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix ahead of team mate Sergio Perez.

The championship leader secured Red Bull’s 100th pole position for a grand prix by three tenths of a second ahead of his team mate. Fernando Alonso repeated the third place he took on the grid for the earlier sprint race.

Q1

Over four hours after the sprint race was won comfortably by Max Verstappen, the drivers returned to their cars to decide the grid for Sunday’s main event. There was no great rush onto the circuit as qualifying began, with many drivers opting to make their first runs on slightly used soft tyres.

Fernando Alonso was fastest after his first run with a 1’35.014, a few hundredths of a second quicker than Verstappen’s first effort. They were both beaten by Oscar Piastri, who went a tenth of a second quicker than Alonso to put his McLaren briefly at the top of the times, before Carlos Sainz Jnr broke into the 1’34s for the first time to take the top spot.

With 20 cars on track, traffic was as much of a problem as ever. Sergio Perez was unimpressed when he arrived into the first corner to find Alexander Albon’s Williams driving slowly around the outside attempting to keep out of the Red Bull’s way, but Perez ran off track, ruining his lap. The stewards noted the incident, but determined no full investigation would be necessary.

In the final minutes, Lewis Hamiltonwas sitting deep in the drop zone down in 19th place, four tenths from safety and almost a full second slower than team mate George Russell. With his final lap, Hamilton looked set to comfortably reach Q2, but he locked up and ran wide at the hairpin, losing a considerable amount of time. He compounded that by running slightly wide at the final corner, and although his lap put him inside the top 15, he was clearly vulnerable.

Sure enough, as the Alpine drivers and Charles Leclerc improved in the final moments, Hamilton sank back out of safety to become the most notable casualty of the first phase of qualifying.

Joining Hamilton out of qualifying were Zhou Guanyu in 16th, Kevin Magnussen in 17th and Yuki Tsunoda in 19th, who was baffled by his inabilty to follow team mate Daniel Ricciardo through into Q2. Logan Sargeant was the slowest driver out in 20th after a spin at turn eight on his final flying lap.

The stewards announced during the session that Nico Hulkenberg will be investigated after qualifying for a pit lane incident…