Piastri grabs last-minute Brazilian GP sprint pole from Norris

Oscar Piastri usurped Lando Norris at the very last minute to steal pole position for Formula 1's Brazilian Grand Prix sprint race.

Norris had dominated sprint qualifying prior to the final run of SQ3. He was eight tenths quicker than Piastri in SQ1 and fastest again in SQ2 and for most of SQ3.

But Piastri delivered a stunning late lap - a 1m08.899s - to pip Norris to pole by just 0.029 seconds with Norris "making too many mistakes" on his final lap, which he aborted.

Charles Leclerc qualified his Ferrari third, a further couple of tenths behind the dominant McLarens.

F1 points leader Max Verstappen didn't have the pace in his RB20 to match the McLarens and had to settle for fourth, splitting the Ferraris.

Mexican GP winner Carlos Sainz completed the top five in the second Ferrari, with George Russell sixth in the sole Mercedes to make it to SQ3.

Pierre Gasly's impressive one-lap form continued as he took seventh in his Alpine ahead of Liam Lawson, a strong eighth in the RB.

Alex Albon was ninth in the lead Williams with Haas stand-in Ollie Bearman having to settle for 10th in the end.

Bearman - taking over from an unwell Kevin Magnussen for Friday's action and Saturday's sprint race for now - was impressive once again, lapping over three tenths quicker than team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, who failed to make it to SQ3.

Bearman looked on course to threaten the top five but had a nightmare final lap in SQ3, in which he picked up the throttle too early out of Turn 2 and then had that laptime - good enough for eighth even with that error - deleted, leaving him 10th.

Perez and Hamilton out early

This weekend is a crunch one for Sergio Perez, with his future at Red Bull in the balance with his podium-less streak stretching to 14 races last weekend.

Red Bull granted him his wish to switch to a different chassis in his pool and sprint qualifying started well enough, with Perez even outpacing Verstappen in SQ1.

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But Perez didn't get a good enough first lap in during SQ2 before failing to reach the chequered flag in time to start his final lap.

That left him knocked out of SQ2 in 13th place - the lowest a Red Bull has qualified for a sprint race all year.

Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes was the other big casualty in SQ2 as he was eliminated in 11th ahead of Hulkenberg's Haas, Perez, Franco Colapinto's Williams and the Sauber of Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas dragged the Sauber out of SQ1 for the first time since the first sprint race of the year at Shanghai in April.

Double Aston SQ1 exit

Aston Martin's painful triple-header got even worse with a double elimination in the first part of sprint qualifying, the only team to fail to get at least one car to SQ2.

Fernando Alonso was knocked out in 16th place after lapping 0.117s slower than Bottas's Sauber.

He was joined in the bottom five by former team-mate Esteban Ocon in the Alpine, RB's Yuki Tsunoda, current Aston team-mate Lance Stroll and Zhou Gunayu - whose best lap was 2.1s slower than Sauber team-mate Bottas's.