Max Verstappen became the first driver in 31 years to take pole position in each of the first six races of the season, and the Red Bull driver will be in line for first place at Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix.
This was his seventh consecutive pole position in total, but he needed to work harder as Sergio Perez was placed on the first row of the Red Bull Ferrari grid, narrowly chased by the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. there were.
Max Verstappen takes pole position at Miami Grand Prix
After Saturday’s sprint, teams were once again allowed to change their cars ahead of qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix.
After an impressive 4th place in the sprint, Daniel Ricciardo was prepared to go into qualifying with a three-place grid penalty due to his hangover from the previous Chinese Grand Prix. Well, in the final it was business as usual. Q1 started with a massive scramble to get onto the track.
Verstappen had the chance to become the first driver in 31 years to take pole position for each of the first six races of the season, but the last driver to do so for Williams was Alain Prost in 1993. However, the pace shown by McLaren in sprint qualifying was particularly impressive. This meant there was hope for Red Bull’s rivals going into the session.
With five minutes remaining in Q1, Carlos Sainz set the fastest time after Lando Norris, Verstappen and Oscar Piastri. All four of them had times within a tenth of their early benchmarks in the early stages of qualifying.
Sergio Perez quickly set the fastest time with a 1 minute 27.772 seconds, but the battle turned to who would finish in the bottom five at the end of Q1 – and the final laps got intense. At that time, Valtteri Bottas was eliminated. Logan Sargent, Ricardo, Kevin Magnussen, and Guanyu Chou.
It was a disappointing return, especially for Ricciardo. Although he was on the second row in sprint qualifying, RB was placed at the end of the grid when the penalty was applied, adding on the team radio that there was “no one behind”.
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F1 2024: Qualifying results between teammates
Q2 was a similar battle for the top 10, with Norris testing his limits at the turn 14/15 chicane as he took to the air in his McLaren. The slowest part of the track.
Alex Albon was briefly shown a double yellow flag for stopping at the final hairpin before taking off, but all eyes will be on the final flying lap and who can make it into the top 10 shootout. .
But after falling off the pace on soft tires on Friday, Norris took a gamble and used medium tires to see how things would go in his final Q2 run, leaving the McLaren driver behind as his rivals stranded on soft rubber. was able to pass safely.
Fernando Alonso missed out on Q3 for the first time this season and was scheduled to start from 15th on Sunday, but failed to crack the top 10. His teammate Lance Stroll was faster in his sister car Aston Martin, but improvements elsewhere knocked him out too.
Both Alpine drivers were also eliminated in 12th and 13th respectively, with Pierre Gasly out-qualifying Esteban Ocon for the first time in a race this year, and Alex Albon also dropping out in Q2.
Verstappen started Q3 with a time of 1 minute 27.241 seconds, half a second faster than teammate Perez, but pole position was not enough as the Ferrari duo of Leclerc and Sainz closed within two tenths of each other from the first run. Ta. A contract has been signed with the current world champion.
Norris was sixth for his McLaren on his first run on medium tyres, but teammate Oscar Piastri, who was running half of McLaren’s substantial upgrade package on Norris’ car, was sixth on his first run. So I moved up two places.
Interestingly, while Norris switched to soft tires on the final lap, both Mercedes drivers attempted to follow McLaren’s lead and try to improve their provisional seventh and eighth positions on medium tires.
Verstappen, Perez and Piastri were unable to improve their best times, but Norris moved up to fifth in his McLaren.
The Ferrari duo also failed to improve, and although Hamilton improved his time slightly on medium tyres, it wasn’t enough to overhaul his sister Mercedes’ Russell, who locked out the fourth row.
Miami Grand Prix 2024: Qualifying Classification
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:27.241
2 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +0.141
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +0.214
4 Sergio Perez Red Bull +0.219
5 Lando Norris McLaren +0.353
6 Oscar Piastri McLaren +0.434
7 George Russell Mercedes +0.826
8 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +0.866
9 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +0.905
10 Yuki Tsunoda RB+0.951
11 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 1:28.222
12 Pierre Gasly Alpine +0.102
13 Esteban OCON Alpine +0.149
14 Alexander Albon Williams +0.191
15 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +0.205
16 Valtteri Bottas Kick Sauber 1:28.463
17 Logan Sargent Williams +0.024
18 Daniel Ricardo RB* +0.154
19 Kevin Magnussen Haas +0.156
20 Zhou Guanyu Kick Sauber +0.359
*3 grid penalties apply.
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