@CharlesLeclerc pips @Max33Verstappen to #AustralianGP pole. #F1 #AusGP
Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75, Qualifying, Formula 1 Heineken Australian Grand Prix 2022, Albert Park Street Circuit, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Image credit to Formula 1. Leclerc Australian GP pole, 2022 Australian GP Qualifying.
Leclerc Australian GP Pole – Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc pipped Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to pole position in qualifying at the Australian GP, which was disrupted by red flags from two big crashes.
In Q3, Leclerc was on top of the pile after the initial flyers, putting in a 1:18.239 just seconds before Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso crashed heavily at the turn 11 right hander, at the end of the back straight and the second DRS zone.
Alonso had just posted the fastest sector two effort before he lost the rear of his A522 racer going through turn 11, the Spaniard said after he crashed having been sent off into the gravel trap and into the outside wall that he “lost the hydraulics” and “could not change gears”.
When the session went green again for the final stage hot-laps – with all the qualifying running taken place on the C5 red side-walled softer compounds – Red Bull’s Perez lead the other nine around, opting to leave pit-lane earlier to take two flying laps whilst the others built to a single tour with two warm-up laps.
Perez’s second effort wound up a very narrow 0.001 seconds adrift of Leclerc’s earlier benchmark, before Verstappen jumped ahead with a 1:18.154.
But Leclerc responded with faster sectors one and three – Alonso held the best effort in sector two – to set a 1:17.868 to clinch his second pole position of the 2022 campaign by 0.286 seconds and the Scuderia’s first at Albert Park in 15 years.
Perez’s third Q3 hot-lap could not better his second one and wound up third, in-front of McLaren’s Lando Norris who was fourth and Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and George Russell who were fifth and sixth respectively.
Hamilton had been behind team-mate Russell with just the final Q3 flyers to go – the Silver Arrows using similar qualifying tactics to Perez after the Alonso red flag, which lasted 15 minutes.
McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo will line up seventh in his home Grand Prix and ahead of Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon who was eighth and Carlos Sainz who qualified ninth in the other Ferrari F1-75 entry.
Sainz was unlucky not to complete his initial Q3 hot-lap just as the red flags hit after Alonso’s heavy shunt and was unable to match his team-mate’s pace.
The aforementioned Alonso took 10th, but was not able to post a time due to his crash.
In the middle segment, which Perez topped, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas could not better their personal best and ended up 11th and 12th on the grid.
The other AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu did produce their best Q2 efforts to end up 13th and 14th respectively.
Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher took 15th.
After the end of the Q2 session, several drivers including Leclerc, Hamilton and Verstappen – complained about the sun setting, which was compromising their vision with both Leclerc and Hamilton asking for a darker visor as they were lapping the Albert Park Street Circuit.
This was because the session was running longer due to the delay following Alonso’s crash and Q1 being stopped with two minutes remaining after a crash between the Canadian duo of Nicholas Latifi and Lance Stroll from Williams and Aston Martin respectively.
Stroll had only reemerged once Aston Martin’s repairs on his AMR22 were complete after his late Q3 shunt, when the duo collided together in a misunderstanding regarding letting cars by on the slower lap as they exited the fifth corner.
Latifi had let Stroll through as they travelled slowly towards turn five – the tight quick right hander that ends Albert Park’s opening sector – when the Williams hit the throttle and passed the Aston Martin on it’s right hand side, with Zhou approaching at a rapid pace.
As Latifi was passing by, Stroll turned in right – possibly to move out of Zhou’s way as drivers must do to avoid impeding drivers on a hot-lap – and the pairing tangled, breaking the Aston Martin’s front-right suspension and sent Latifi darting into the wall and smashed all corners of the FW44 racer.
When the session was restarted after a 15-minute suspension, which Aston Martin used to repair Sebastian Vettel’s AMR22 entry in time, that looked set to not be ready before the red flag, a flurry of drivers lined-up at the end of pit-lane and then pushed to gain track position and get the tyres up to optimal temperature for their final flyer.
Only Gasly and Vettel were able to post personal best efforts, which meant Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon and Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen – one of the most active on the final warm-up tour as he overtook the Williams and Ricciardo to lead the pack – missed out in 16th and 17th behind Schumacher, who out-qualified Magnussen for the first time in their time together as Haas team-mates.
Vettel’s time was enough to put him ahead of Latifi’s effort before his collision with Stroll, who ended at the rear with no time posted.
As he returned to pit-lane at the end of the first qualifying stage, Albon, who will start three places back tomorrow following his crash with Stroll at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, was ordered to stop his FW44 racer ahead of turn 13 when the Grove-based squad found an issue.
The crash between Latifi and Stroll is currently under investigation, whilst Vettel was hit with a $600 fine for speeding in the pit-lane during his brief Q1 appearance, which was topped by Verstappen.
2022 Australian GP Qualifying – The Top Three
2022 Australian GP Pole Position – Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75, 1:17.868:
“It felt good! Even more because it’s a track where I’ve always struggled in the past, in Q3 I managed to put everything together so it feels great, very happy. The car is nice to drive, everything is possible tomorrow. We need a good start!”
2nd Place – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing – RBPT, RB18, 1:18.154:
“Not good, I didn’t really feel good in the car all weekend. I don’t think there’s been one lap where I’ve felt good in the car. We’ll try to analyse it. This weekend has been all over the place. Happy to be second, but as a team we want more.”
3rd Place – Sergio Perez, #11, Oracle Red Bull Racing – RBPT, RB18, 1:18.240:
“It felt good in Q1, Q2, things were going good. It’s hard to get the momentum going with all the red flags, I regret the decision we made with the tyres going into Q3.”
You can see the full Formula 1 Heineken Australian Grand Prix 2022 Qualifying Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1108/australia/qualifying.html
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