World champion Max Verstappen secured the first pole position of the 2024 season, two tenths of a second quicker than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Despite Verstappen expecting that his final Q3 effort would be beatable, Leclerc could not deny the Red Bull driver his first pole of the season at the end of qualifying.
George Russell secured third on the grid for Mercedes, with Carlos Sainz Jnr in fourth and Sergio Perez fifth in the second Red Bull.
Q1
The first qualifying session of the season looked set to be an incredibly tight one. The opening phase began with conditions near-identical to those drivers had experienced in Thursday’s second practice session, unusually cool with blustery winds.
Ferrari were the first out on track with Carlos Sainz Jnr and Charles Leclerc leaving the garage together, both on the medium compound tyres. They were also joined by the two Alpines of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, also on mediums, with Sainz setting the early pace with a 1’31.208, half a tenth quicker than his team mate.
Eventually, the rest of the field headed out on track with all 16 choosing softs. After everyone had completed their first run on the softs, Sainz improved to retain his position as quickest of all with a 1’29.909, a tenth ahead of Max Verstappen in second with Lando Norris third and Fernando Alonso in fourth. A margin of just 1.372 seconds covered the entire field of 20 cars.
As the field headed out onto the track with under four minutes remaining, the two Saubers of Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen in the Haas and both Alpines were sat in the drop zone and in need of improving. With the exception of pace-setter Sainz, all the driversventured out for a final Q1 effort.
Some were less willing than others, however: Leclerc expressed that he did not agree with the decision to send him back out on a fresh set of softs. Ferrari brought him in before he set a time, after concluding the track was not improving quickly enough for his position to be at risk, and McLaren did the same with Norris, who complained he had unnecessarily put a lap on a new set of tyres.
After the chequered flag flew and everyone who opted to finish a lap had, only Magnussen had successfully escaped the bottom five to compete in Q2. That meant that both Saubers and both Alpines were knocked out, while Williams driver Logan Sargeant joined them in 18th. The entire field of 20 cars were only covered by just over a second.
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