#BrazilGP Qualifying: #Magnussen takes shock sprint pole in damp session. #F1 #SaoPauloGP

Magnussen Brazil Sprint Pole – Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen has clinched a shock maiden pole position for tomorrow’s 100km Sprint in a slippery qualifying session at the Sao Paulo GP as a tyre error caught out Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

 

 

The Dane starts the sprint race, surprisingly landed P1 when a red flag in a gloomy Q3 allowed conditions to worsen.

 

This meant no one could improve in the closing stages of qualifying to leave the Kannapolis-Banbury outfit to watch the clock to ensure Haas was assured of it’s maiden pole and the celebrations went wild.

 

In Q3, which was in dry conditions, drama began when Ferrari took a major gamble on a set of green-marked intermediates with Charles Leclerc awaiting a band of rain – qualifying having started damp before drying up.

 

The nine other drivers were all on the C4 red side-walled Soft compounds.

 

The Maranello-marque were hoping the showers would arrive in time to catch the other drivers on slicks out, whilst it’s driver would be on the right tyre at the optimal time before conditions deteriorated.

 

However, Leclerc realised he was the odd one out and was furious, waving to the pit-wall as he passed by to begin his flyer.

 

The Monegasque-driver was the slowest of all through sector one, struggling for grip and holding up a charging Red Bull of Sergio Perez before abandoning his hot-lap and diving into the pit-lane for a set of softs.

 

With intermediates the clear wrong choice, Magnussen took provisional pole with a 1:11.674 and was two-tenths ahead of Verstappen.

 

Then Mercedes’ George Russell – who had just jumped to third place – went off into the gravel trap at the exit of Descida do Lago to bring out the red flags.

 

The Briton appeared to have locked the front-right into the left-hander and the rear of his F1 W13 clipped the slippery white-line to slip him off. As the Mercedes driver tried to recover with a spin, his rear wheels were stuck in the gravel.

 

Whilst Russell at first kept spinning his rear wheels and signalled to the marshals to help recover his W13, he eventually retired from the session.

 

But with the delay long enough to allow the threat of rain to return, no one could find time despite more than five minutes left on the clock,

 

With the knowledge that they could not improve, the drivers started to exit their cars to send the Haas F1 Team into cheers.

 

Russell therefore keeps third place despite his trip into the gravel, whilst McLaren’s Lando Norris was fourth and ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz – although the Spaniard is set to start tenth due to a five-grid-placed-penalty for taking on his sixth internal combustion engine for the season.

 

BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso start the 100km Sprint Race in sixth and seventh respectively and in-front of Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Perez who placed in eighth and ninth.

 

In the middle segment, which was topped by Verstappen with a 1:10.881, and only 0.009 seconds ahead of Ferrari’s Sainz, Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon was the quickest of the Q2 eliminatees in 11^th and starts the 100km F1 Sprint in-front of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly who was 12^th.

 

Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll placed in 13^th and 15^th respectively as McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo split the duo in 14^th.

 

The dying stages of Q2, was something of a damp satire as the at-risk Mercedes improved.

 

The Silver Arrows looked to be under threat as some drivers reported more rain was arriving late on, with the Brackley-based squad having only lapped on a scrub set of softs to run outside the top ten.

 

But as the Aston Martin AMR22 entries struggled to improve, Russell eventually climbed to third with five minutes remaining and Hamilton slotted behind his fellow British-compatriot in fourth but was demoted down to ninth.

 

Sainz also moved to second at the end, after sitting tenth and only 0.008 seconds clear of the knockout zone, but the Ferrari driver jumped clear by running to a 1:10.890 effort to beat team-mate Leclerc by 0.06 seconds and a very slim 0.009 adrift of pace-setting Verstappen.

 

In the first qualifying stage, which was topped by Norris, Ferrari were also forced to survive a major Q1 scare when the initial damp conditions improved sufficiently to allow for a switch to softer rubber after slick-running AlphaTauri of Gasly began posting quick sectors.

 

The Frenchman was struggling for grip at first, sliding well through the last corner, but next tour round, the Alpine-bound driver was fastest by 0.6 seconds and then improved by another second.

 

To respond, Leclerc’s F1-75 racer was put up on the jacks by the Ferrari crew, but only had a scrub set on hand, so a delay hit, while a fresh set was retrieved and Sainz was held in a double-stack.

 

Then Leclerc was forced to abandon his initial hot-lap on the C4 softs when he was held up by AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda through sector three, in-turn holding up his chasing team-mate.

 

Whilst Sainz still managed to improve, Leclerc had to do it on his own, but did enough to make it to 12^th place and survive the late gains, as Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi missed out on a Q2 appearance.

 

Latifi topped the session only moments earlier after he put on a set of softs but was rapidly relegated down to miss out by 0.16 seconds to Ricciardo. The Canadian therefore qualified for the sprint in 16^th and ahead of Alfa Romeo pairing Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas who were 17^th and 18^th respectively as AlphaTauri’s Tsunoda and Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher brought up the rear.

---

2022 Brazil GP Pole for F1 Sprint – Kevin Magnussen, #20, Haas F1 Team-Ferrari, VF-22, 1:11.674:

 

 

“I don’t know what to say. The team put me out in the perfect position, did a pretty decent lap and we are on pole! It’s incredible, thank you. Maximum attack [tomorrow], let’s go for something funny.”

---

2^nd Place – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18, +0.283:

 

“We knew it was going to be that one lap because of the rain, I locked up into Turn 8 so that cost me pole today. In these conditions anything can happen, and we are still upfront which is most important.”

---

3^rd Place – George Russell, #63, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W13 E Performance, +0.385:

 

“Happy to be P3 and massive congrats to Kevin, what an awesome job he did. Good place to be starting from, it’s our best shot of trying to finish ahead of Max [Verstappen] and Red Bull is in the mixed conditions.”

 

You can see the full Formula 1 Heineken Grande Premio De Sao Paulo 2022 Qualifying Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1137/brazil/qualifying.html

---

#BrazilGP FP1: @SChecoPerez quickest ahead of @CharlesLeclerc. #F1 #SaoPauloGP

#Formula1 @Heineken Grande Premio De Sao Paulo 2022 Preview. #F1 #BrazilGP