Piastri beats Norris in McLaren 1-2 in sprint qualifying

Oscar Piastri pipped his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to top sprint qualifying at Formula 1’s Brazilian Grand Prix, with Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

The McLaren drivers dominated qualifying and took very different approaches to SQ3 compared to their rivals.

Elsewhere, there was a shock SQ2 exit for Lewis Hamilton, while Sergio Perez could only take the changed chassis on his Red Bull RB20 to 13th and Oliver Bearman again shone for Haas.

In SQ3, the McLarens came out very early once on the softs they had all run for the opening two sessions, with rain clouds steadily building up and track temperatures plummeting.

But with softer softs for the 2024 event here, the McLarens had no trouble firing them up, nor keeping the alive on the resurfaced track.

Norris blasted to a 1m08.928s with his first run, with Piastri trailing him before they quickly returned to the pits – in the former’s case for a front wing setting adjustment, while the latter went straight through – before having another attempt on the same set of softs.

Piastri used his second attempt to head Norris by 0.029s with a 1m08.899s, with Norris abandoning his second go after producing a poor middle sector compared to his first attempt.

The best of the single-effort runners in SQ3 was Leclerc, with Verstappen slotting in behind in fourth and Mexico winner Carlos Sainz fifth in the other Ferrari.

Then came George Russell as the sole Mercedes runner in SQ3, as Pierre Gasly, Liam Lawson, Alex Albon and Bearman rounded out the top 10.

Bearman might have done better had he not had a big moment in the Senna S and gone so wide in Turn 2 that he had his time deleted for track limits, before staying on a lap that would not count despite having time to back off and go again, plus with the soft tyres apparently capable of doing multiple laps here.

At the end of SQ2 topped by Norris looking in dominant form at this stage, Bearman and Lawson got through with just a single flying lap in the middle segment compared to most of the rest, while Nico Hulkenberg only had one shot too and he failed to progress.

Hulkenberg was knocked out around the big fallers in Hamilton and Perez, with Franco Colapinto and Valtteri Bottas also eliminated for Williams and Sauber respectively.

Perez’s exit came after he failed to complete his final outlap in time and so…