Lando Norris will start the Sao Paulo Grand Prix from pole in a marathon wet-weather qualifying session, with his title rival Max Verstappen starting as low as 17th on the grid.
The grid-setting session, postponed from Saturday due to thunderstorms, featured five red flags as drivers struggled to keep their cars on the road in treacherously slippery conditions and sometimes driving rain.
Lance Stroll’s crash at Curva do Sol in the final minute of Q2 was the most consequential for the title, costing championship leader Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez a spot in the top 10.
It was particularly costly for Verstappen, for whom a five-place grid penalty for a new internal combustion engine will see him start the grand prix 17th, gifting pole-getter Norris a chance to take a significant chunk out of his 44-point championship deficit.
Norris’s pole was decided in the first five minutes of Q3, when the top nine cars – Stroll’s crashed Aston Martin excluded – took to the circuit for continuous laps in case conditions worsened.
The McLaren driver was consistently the most competitive, twice rotating through top spot before qualifying was suspended for a fourth time, on this occasion for Fernando Alonso’s crashed car at the high-speed Mergulho.
The Spaniard’s Aston Martin snapped from beneath him suddenly and without warning as he got on the power, ploughing at speed into the far barrier. With damage to the front and rear of the car, a hasty gearbox and power unit change could loom in the barely 3 hours before lights-out for the grand prix.
The session resumed after 12 minutes, but it had barely got going in anger before it was suspended again, this time for Alex Albon, who wrote off his Williams in a monster crash at the first turn.
The Thai driver’s car snapped under braked, spinning backwards and copping a heavy hit to its right-hand side and rear before coming to rest in the run-off in a smoldering heap. He was able to extricate himself from the wreckage, but the team will have its work cut out to repair the car in time for the grand prix.
If Albon’s car can be fixed, it may come at the expense of efforts to repair teammate Franco Colapinto’s car after the rookie crashed in Q1 on a miserable afternoon for Williams’s mechanics.
The session resumed with little more than three minutes on the clock and seven cars remaining, and Norris picked up where he’d left off, pumping in fastest laps to put pole beyond reach after almost 1h 45m of disrupted track action.
“There was a lot going on today,” he said. “But I’m super, super happy, because I was struggling a lot at the beginning of qualifying.
“That risk-reward was not easy today. Eyes forward . It’s never easy in these conditions. It’s never settling down and getting on with it. We’ll see. We’ll prepare well.”
George Russell made a late improvement to take second, the Mercedes driver getting with 0.173s of top spot.
“It was a great session,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do I the race.”
Yuki Tsunoda was sensational in the wet, taking a career-best third on the grid at 0.706s adrift for RB.
“It was very tricky,” he said. “Certainly I enjoyed it. I think we had good pace straight away. I had a couple of mistakes, had a bit of luck as well.
“I think overall as a team, including Liam as well, we did a really good job.”
Esteban Ocon will start fourth for Alpine ahead of Lawson in the second RB, the two drivers split by just 0.009s.
Charles Leclerc was sixth after catching a yellow flag caused by Oscar Piastri, who locked up at the first turn on his final lap.
Piastri was eighth fastest behind the crashed-out Albon, with the wrecks of Alonso and Stroll’s Aston Martin cars completing the top 10.
Valtteri Bottas qualified 11th, his best one-lap result since April’s Chinese Grand Prix, ahead of Verstappen and Perez.
Perez was incensed to have missed the cut-off, blasting the team for having him queue in pit lane to rejoin the track after Sainz’s red flag, during which time his tires cooled in the rain. It meant he couldn’t improve his time quickly enough, needing to re-warm his tires on the track, leaving him exposed to the Stroll red flag that dumped him out of qualifying early.
“Come on guys!” he shouted. “We’ve got to do a better program. We should have waited. If everyone is waiting already at the end of the pit lane, why we do ?”
Carlos Sainz was 14th after crashing his Ferrari at the Senna S, his car spinning off the road and making heavy contact with the wall dividing the track from the pit exit, causing the second red flag of the day.
He and Pierre Gasly, who qualified 15th, will be promoted a place on the grid thanks to Verstappen’s penalty, as will Lewis Hamilton, who was the biggest scalp of the early wet weather, qualifying 16th after consistently failing to string together a clean lap in a car he described as “undrivable.”
Hamilton’s penultimate lap wasn’t good enough to get him out of the bottom five, and though he temporarily leapt up to 14th, improvements from others ensured he was never going to keep the place.
“This damn car, man,” he radioed in frustration, eliminated from Q1 for the second time in three grands prix.
Oliver Bearman was the quickest Haas but ended up 17th — he’ll also gain a place after Verstappen’s penalty — with teammate Nico Hulkenberg in 19th.
Colapinto was sandwiched between them despite crashing out of qualifying less than 10 minutes into Q1, the wheels of his Williams spinning up exiting the Senna S and sending him smacking into the outside barriers at Curva do Sol after a 360-degree spin. His mechanics were spotted by TV cameras with their heads in their hands, knowing that they had less than five hours to repair the car’s right-hand corners before lights out for the grand prix.
Zhou Guanyu was last in the soaking-wet first session for Sauber.
