Lewis Hamilton leads the provisional grid for the 2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix sprint qualifying race, ahead of Max Verstappen. The two championship contenders will be at the front for the Sprint again. Crucially for Red Bull, Max Verstappen beat Valtteri Bottas by a tenth to seal the front row. Sergio Perez just a few thousandths behind Bottas.
Scuderia Ferrari felt that rain might have been on the way, so Charles and Carlos went out straight away – albeit on a used set of soft tyres. Pierre Gasly was faster than those Ferrari cars on the opening laps, his 1:10.062 being four tenths quicker than Carlos Sainz. In his second run, the Spanish driver improved to just over two tenths of a second behind Hamilton, while Charles Leclerc saw his time scrapped for exceeding track limits. With less than three minutes left in Q1, Charles was back out on track in his SF21 car: no mistakes from the Monegasque driver there. He was safely through – going third and just a tenth off his teammate. Nikita Mazepin, Nicholas Latifi, George Russell, Mick Schumacher and Lance Stroll were out of Q1.
The 15-minute session was quickly down to a 12-minute session as no drivers headed out on track in Q2. The one change for Q2 this weekend is that they’re won’t be any medium tyres with drivers having to qualify on the softs. Solid lap times for both Ferrari drivers, who had no difficulties in making it through to the final phase of qualifying. Esteban Ocon, Sebastian Vettel, Yuki Tsunoda, Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi were out in Q2.
Q3 and the final shootout of Interlagos qualifying was therefore underway. Behind the top four of Mercedes and Red Bull, Pierre Gasly was once again best of the rest in AlphaTauri ahead of the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz and his teammate Charles Leclerc, who was not at all happy with hin final attempt in Q3 at Interlagos.
Sao Paulo Grand Prix – Here are the complete results from qualifying ahead of tomorrow’s 2021 F1 World Championship race at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.
Results (Classification):
Q3
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes -1:07.934
Max Verstappen Red Bull Racing +0.438
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes +0.535
Sergio Perez Red Bull Racing +0.549
Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri +0.843
Carlos Sainz Scuderia Ferrari +0.892
Charles Leclerc Scuderia Ferrari +1.026
Lando Norris McLaren +1.046
Daniel Ricciardo McLaren +1.105
Fernando Alonso Alpine +1.179
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