After Saturday's unacceptable tragedy, qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix was completed today, with Lando Norris taking pole position.
In Q1, which was postponed to the following day, conditions were almost the same as the previous day. Consequently, the first leg showed a picture of cautious testing, with many spins and accidents. Franco Collapinto was the first victim, hitting the wall and causing a brief red flag period. These conditions were best read by Max Verstappen, Alexander Albon, and George Russell, while those eliminated included Collapinto, Lewis Hamilton, Oliver Bearman, Nico Hülkenberg, and Zhou Guanyu.
We'd barely reached the halfway point of Q2 when Carlos Sainz replicated Franco Colapinto, crashing his Ferrari into the wall in almost the same place where his Argentinian colleague had done earlier. Another red flag followed... At that point, Oscar Piastri, George Russell, and Lance Stroll were leading the field, but it was clear that with the arrival of intermediate tires, this wouldn't be the final classification. Shortly after, Stroll's elimination unleashed a crush of drivers, after which red flags followed one after another. Along with him, Valtteri Bottas, the two Red Bulls, Carlos Sainz, and Pierre Gasly were also forced to retire, as despite the remaining time, this stage wasn't restarted. All of this was a relief for McLaren, and especially for Norris...
Q3 descended into total chaos, with first Alonso crashing, then Albon wrecking his Williams, and by the end there were only seven left in the top 10. In the final clean minutes of qualifying, we could see continued improvements, with the trio of Lando Norris, George Russell and Yuki Tsunoda proving the quickest.
