McLaren sweeps Hungary front row after two red flags

McLaren secured its first Formula 1 grand prix qualifying 1-2 since 2012 as Lando Norris took pole position for the 2024 Hungarian GP and Oscar Piastri beat Max Verstappen to second on the grid by 0.002 seconds.

But Verstappen’s under-pressure Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez was eliminated in Q1 after a heavy crash.

McLaren’s Norris set the provisional benchmark of 1m15.227s - 0.328s faster than Verstappen’s first effort - after the final 10 qualifiers had completed their first runs of Q3.

Drizzle began to fall at the end of Q3 but this had no effect as Piastri improved to second, 0.022s behind Norris - who aborted his lap for a red flag. Verstappen did improve, but lost out on pole position by 0.024s as he qualified third. 

That red flag was due to Yuki Tsunoda crashing exiting Turn 5, and then the rain began to fall, which led to Verstappen getting out of his car - and essentially confirming McLaren’s first grand prix front row lockout since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.

With just over two minutes of Q3 remaining, perhaps Verstappen made the right decision - only one out of the seven drivers who emerged after that red flag improved.

Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton split the Ferraris with fifth on the grid as Carlos Sainz qualified fourth and Charles Leclerc sixth.

Aston Martin qualified on the fourth row with Fernando Alonso two tenths ahead of Lance Stroll, and RB rounded out the top 10 - Daniel Ricciardo ninth after improving at the very end of Q3, and Tsunoda 10th.

Hamilton survives Q2 scare

After the opening efforts of Q2, Valtteri Bottas found himself at risk of elimination along with both Williams drivers, Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg, and RB’s Ricciardo - while Verstappen was fastest ahead of Piastri and Sainz. 

Norris ended up setting the fastest lap of Q2 and put himself 0.230s ahead of Verstappen while Piastri didn’t improve but stayed in third, ahead of the Ferraris. 

Meanwhile Ricciardo managed to improve to ninth, behind his RB team-mate Tsunoda. Both Aston Martins also made it to Q3 having saved an additional set of soft tyres.

Hamilton survived elimination by just 0.010s while Hulkenberg lost out in 11th ahead of Bottas, who finished 12th in a heavily-upgraded Sauber. Without emerging with his rivals for a final Q2 run, Alex Albon finished 13th while his Williams team-mate Logan Sargeant railed at traffic after finishing 14th.

Kevin Magnussen meanwhile qualified a provisional 15th for Haas.

Perez crashes and Russell bows out in Q1

Rain fell after the end of the Formula 2 sprint race and stopped just before F1 qualifying began - although drivers were told the rain would return.

Two under-pressure drivers - Sargeant and Perez - made separate errors in Q1. 

Sargeant had a massive lock-up at Turn 1 as he began his second flying lap and hit the barriers, which damaged his front wing and suspension, but the American driver still made it into Q2 with 14th.

Perez’s incident was far more detrimental as the Mexican lost traction entering Turn 8 and spun, with the left-hand side of his Red Bull hitting the barriers hard to bring out a red flag. 

That impact not only marred his efforts to prove his credentials to Red Bull, as he now starts a provisional 16th for Sunday’s race, but it destroyed some of the upgrades that Red Bull had brought to the Hungaroring.

Although rain returned to wash away some rubber during the red flag stoppage and DRS was briefly disabled (before being enabled towards the end of Q1) some of those in the dropzone did manage to improve on new soft tyres: Ricciardo shrugged off brake issues earlier in Q1 to jump from 16th to first in Q1; Stroll went from 17th to seventh; and Magnussen made it from 18th to 15th.

Along with Perez, Mercedes’ George Russell was eliminated from Q1 in 17th having emerged while the track was relatively damp and lost half a second in sector two alone.

The British Grand Prix polesitter lamented his team’s choice not to fuel up the car sufficiently for two final runs in Q1 and later said it was a “disaster”. Sauber seemed to have made a similar error with Zhou Guanyu, who finished 18th in qualifying.

Neither Alpine emerged for a final run on new soft tyres at the end of Q1, which left Esteban Ocon 19th and Pierre Gasly 20th.