Verstappen grabs final pole of the season ahead of Perez and Leclerc

Max Verstappen got here out on high of an exhilarating battle to say the pole place for the season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, beating his group mate Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. F1Technical’s Balázs Szabó reviews on the qualifying session.

Eye-catching efficiency from Vettel in Q1

It was AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, who led the timesheets with a 1m26.135s early on in Q1, a tenth ahead of Schumacher. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc then rapidly beat the Japanese’s lap time with a 1m25.211s, however Red Bull’s Sergio Perez went practically 0.4s faster just some moments later.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen had a clear first scorching lap, and glided by 0.066s sooner than his Mexican teammate. In the meantime, Carlos Sainz put his Ferrari SF-75 in P3 after making a mistake on his first effort.

Each driver went for a second run bar the Ferrari duo with most drivers choosing a brand new set of C5 compound, however the Mercedes and Red Bull drivers keep on with their set of red-walled tyres on which they accomplished their earlier flying laps.

The greatest shock was Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel, who produced a mighty lap to take sixth at the finish of the first half of the qualifying session.

Following his shock pole place final day out at Sao Paulo only a week in the past, Kevin Magnussen was unable to progress from Q1 with the Danish driver complaining about site visitors. Despite his eye-catching laps in Free Practice 3, Alexander Albon didn’t handle to earn a promotion into Q2 and solely beat his group mate Nicholas Latifi by just some hundreds of a second.

Kevin Magnussen, Pierre Gasly, Valtteri Bottas, Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi had been knocked out at the finish of Q1.

Ferrari again in high type in Q2

Mercedes despatched their drivers out on to the Yas Marina circuit fairly early on in the second section of qualifying. On their used gentle tyres from Q1, Hamilton posted a 1m25.722s, however Russell managed to topple him by 0.4s.

Perez shocked the competitors by an enormous lap of 1m24.419s, placing himself 0.4s ahead of his group mate Verstappen.

Despite being hindered by site visitors on a number of events, Vettel accomplished one other very good lap to go solely half a second slower than what Perez was capable of do earlier on.

In the dying minutes of Q2, Ferrari drivers Leclerc and Sainz confirmed eye-catching tempo on the new C5 tyres, ending the session second and third quickest respectively solely a tenth behind Perez.

McLaren managed to hold over their high-quality type from Q1 with Norris and Ricciardo each getting the promotion into the final qualifying part. However, McLaren’s arch rival in the Constructors’ Championship, Alpine had a barely worse exhibiting with Ocon managing to get himself by way of into Q3, however Fernando Alonso failing to go sooner than P11.

Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Mick Schumacher, Lance Stroll and Zhou Guanyu had been knocked out at the finish of Q2.

Thirlling battle in Q3

Verstappen led the manner with a time of 1m 23.988s after the first Q3 runs and improved to a 1m 23.824s on his final lap. Despite setting the tempo in the center half of the qualifying session, Perez was unable to beat his group mate, and needed to contend himself with a second place in the finish, ending the session two tenths of a second adrift of Verstappen.

Leclerc has been complaining about the behaviour of his automobile throughout the whole weekend, however he demonstrated his class as soon as extra by grabbing P3 on the grid solely a fraction behind Perez. His group mate Sainz appeared to have the higher hand, however his final effort noticed him find yourself fourth quickest, two tenths of a second behind the quick Monegasque driver.

There was nothing to selected between Hamilton and Russell in qualifying, and in the finish the seven-time world champion managed to beat his younger group mate, however the duo was separated by solely three hundreds of a second and will line up in P5 and P6 in the season-closing grand prix.

Lando Norris grabbed seventh in his McLaren, ahead of Alpine rival Esteban Ocon. Four time world champion Vettel stormed to ninth throughout his final F1 qualifying session, whereas Ricciardo rounded out the high 10, albeit the Australian will serve a three-place grid penalty for crashing with Kevin Magnussen in final weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix.