7th consecutive pole for Verstappen, Ferrari ready to fight

Max Verstappen was fastest in today’s qualifying session for the Miami Grand Prix, securing his 38th pole position. Ferrari’s Leclerc and Sainz ended up second and third fastest and were upbeat about their chances to be competitive during the race.

Following a very eventful Sprint race in the morning, several drivers were eager to bounce back. Among them Lewis Hamilton, queuing up at the end of the pitlane to be one of the first to get going. Of course it didn’t take long before many others joined him.

Hamilton’s pace however wasn’t too impressive, ending up just 9th after the first series of laps in which the Ferrari duo took the lead, a tenth ahead of Sergio Perez an another tenth to Nico Hulkenberg. The Aston Martins were 5th and 6th until everybody was demoted a position by Max Verstappen. The latter was on a different schedule and emerged only past the halfway point, going out for a single flying lap on a used set of softs.

When Verstappen returned to the pits most several drivers were already underway again to prepare for a second attempt. Sainz interestingly improved to top the times again despite using a used set of tyres. He topped Norris on a fresh set with Piastri slotting into fourth.

Still, even after that phase of second flying laps the final dash of drivers at risk was still to come, including another improvement by Verstappen, this time on a fresh set of softs. At the back, Tsunoda improved to 12th to make it through along with Albon as both punched back from their SQ1 elimination from Friday. Hulkenberg and Alonso just made it through as well while Bottas was eliminated by 0.010s. Sargeant was out as well, just like Ricciardo, Magnussen and Zhou. Ricciardo was very disappointed with that result after his strong Sprint qualifying and race while Magnussen justifiably blamed traffic at Turn 17.

In Q2 Verstappen was one of the first to get out on track, again with a used set of softs. This saw him easily topped by both Ferraris and the McLarens as Leclerc went fastest, 0.439s ahead of Verstappen’s effort. Hulkenberg was impressive in 6th, followed by Tsunoda, Perez, Russell, the Alpines and Hamilton.

The Aston Martin cars were unusually low in the pecking order so had a lot of work on their hands for the second outing.

That second outing kicked off by the typical queue at the end of the pitlane 5 to 3 minutes from the end of the session as drivers went out slowly by leaving some clear track between them and the car ahead of them.

Alonso soon found out Q3 was out of reach as he was unable to improve. Stroll did improve but he too didn’t make it. Hamilton on the other hand somehow found 6 tenths and shot up to second on the timing sheet. Verstappen also improved to get into second but it remained Leclerc who set the fastest time in Q2.

Hulkenberg kicked off Q3 with a laptime of 1:29.104, soon topped by Hamilton, then Russell, then Perez and eventually also Verstappen going fastest. The Ferrari duo Leclerc and Sainz then slotted into second and third.

The McLarens were last to finish their flying laps with Piastri going 4th fastest and Norris a surprising 6th on fresh medium tyres, the only driver to use this tyre during this entire qualifying session. Theoretically this should be several tenths slower than the softs but Norris ended up just 0.15s behind his team mate.

When the cars left for their second and final attempt it emerged that both Mercedes were on new mediums as well. Not blind for Norris’ performance the engineers at Brackley probably believe new mediums are better than used softs. All others were able to enjoy a fresh set of softs but few managed to make big gains.

Leclerc and Sainz mainly lost in the second sector and were therefore unable to challenge for pole, leaving Verstappen to take his 38th pole position, his 7th in a row. Perez moved up to 4th with Norris ending up in 5th, a tenth ahead of Piastri.

Behind them, Russell was the fastest but move than 4 tenths behind Piastri and more than 8 tenths behind Verstappen. Hamilton secured 8th with an improvement on the mediums as Hulkenberg and Tsunoda completed the top 10.