Oscar Piastri clinched pole position with an impressive last-minute lap during Sprint qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos on Friday.
His McLaren teammate Lando Norris had been leading for most of the session, but Piastri’s final lap in SQ3 pushed him ahead just in time. Charles Leclerc secured third place, while Max Verstappen, the World Championship leader, will start in fourth.
During Sprint qualifying, the sessions are shorter, and drivers must use specific tires. In SQ1, they used medium tires for the 12 minutes as they raced around the cloudy Interlagos.
The recently resurfaced track was expected to improve as the session went on, especially since there had only been one practice session on it earlier in the day.
Towards the end of SQ1, both Aston Martin drivers and the Sauber duo found themselves in danger of elimination. Franco Colapinto had not set a competitive lap before the last runs, while Liam Lawson impressively sat in P5, just ahead of Verstappen after his initial run.
As the clouds rolled in, drivers quickly went out for their final attempts. Sergio Perez managed to go slightly faster than his teammate Verstappen in SQ1, trailing behind Piastri and Leclerc. Norris then took the top spot, finishing over seven tenths of a second ahead of the competition.
Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Yuki Tsunoda, Lance Stroll, and Zhou Guanyu were the first drivers to be eliminated from the session.
SQ2 began with more medium tires on the cars, but the sky was still dark over the track, and there was a line of cars waiting to leave the pit lane to set a competitive time.
Norris set the fastest time with a 1:09.063, putting him ahead of everyone else by a significant margin—more than four tenths quicker than Verstappen, the next fastest driver.
Verstappen was slightly quicker than Norris in the first sector, but in the winding middle sector at Interlagos, Norris’s McLaren showed better performance early in the session.
Towards the end, the Haas driver Oliver Bearman, who was filling in for the sick Kevin Magnussen, managed to make it to SQ3 on his last lap. However, Sergio Perez from Red Bull was unable to finish his lap in time and was told to pit, meaning he would not advance.
Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes also did not make it past SQ2, finishing in 11th place, just a tenth behind Alex Albon from Williams and Liam Lawson from VCARB, both of whom moved on.
In SQ3, Norris set the standard again with his first flying lap, breaking into the 1:08s for the first time, and was three tenths ahead of Piastri.
Bearman had his time canceled due to exceeding track limits, but Piastri managed to pull off a great lap at the end, clocking a 1:08.899 and finishing just 0.029 seconds ahead of Norris.
