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Max Verstappen snatched pole position for the 2024 United States Grand Prix sprint race, as Formula 1 championship rival Lando Norris qualified down in fourth.
Norris needs to take all the points he can out of Verstappen’s 52-point advantage over the final six races and three sprints of this season if he is to take the world championship away from the Red Bull driver, so this has to go down as an early blow to that ambition.
"I've been struggling the whole day honestly with the balance and the set-up," Norris said.
"The lap was shocking, not a terrible day, could have been worse, could have been better, I'll take it."
Verstappen complained of ride problems with his Red Bull early in sprint qualifying, but his SQ3 lap on soft tyres was enough to beat George Russell’s Mercedes to pole by just 0.012 seconds.
Mercedes ran out of sync with the other cars in SQ3 and went for laps early. It paid off for Russell but Lewis Hamilton couldn't capitalise as he encountered yellow flags at Turn 12 and almost lost the rear of his Mercedes as he slowed for the corner.
He finished the session down in seventh, behind the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, having lapped 0.008s slower than he did in SQ2.
The Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, as well as Norris’s McLaren, all lapped in 1m33.0s as they each failed in their respective attempts to beat Russell’s 1m32.845s provisional pole lap.
Leclerc ended up third, with Sainz fifth, while Hulkenberg rounded out the top six with a lap that was within three and a half tenths of Verstappen’s eventual pole time.
Kevin Magnussen made it two Haas inside the top 10 with the eighth fastest time, ahead of Yuki Tsunoda’s RB and Franco Colapinto’s Williams, which crucially spun off at Turn 12 when his soft tyres were at their best, also hampering Hamilton.
Colapinto doesn't hold back but spins off the track
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 18, 2024
A great effort to get into SQ3 by the Williams driver 👏#F1Sprint #USGP pic.twitter.com/0KLBCHgiEl
Sergio Perez continued his underwhelming qualifying form relative to Verstappen by falling in SQ2.
His best SQ2 lap was nearly a second slower than Verstappen’s in that segment and was nearly two tenths off the lap that put Tsunoda’s inferior RB into SQ3 at Perez’s expense.
Liam Lawson called his first qualifying session since replacing Daniel Ricciardo at RB “scrappy”, but it ended with the 12th fastest time in SQ2, just over a tenth slower than Perez, until that lap was deleted for a marginal track limits offence at Turn 1 that relegated Lawson to 15th on the grid.
Similarly, Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin was relegated to 14th after his best time was deleted, promoting Pierre Gasly’s upgraded Alpine to 12th and the other Aston of Lance Stroll (who also had his lap deleted) to 13th.
Oscar Piastri was the most unexpected of the drivers to fall in SQ1. His best lap of the session was deleted for a track limits violation after his McLaren ran wide over the kerb exiting the penultimate corner.
Piastri was lapping comfortably inside the top 10 until that point, but that deletion relegated him to 16th, his ‘banker’ lap falling just 0.016s short of Gasly’s Alpine.
Alex Albon’s Williams also came unstuck at the penultimate corner, spinning through 360 degrees on the exit after heavily clouting the apex kerb.
With that lap ruined he ended SQ1 in 18th, nearly a tenth and a half off Esteban Ocon’s Alpine but ahead of the Saubers, of which Valtteri Bottas’s was the fastest, even before team-mate Zhou Guanyu had his best laptime deleted.
