Friday’s qualifying was clearly dominated by Hamilton. What do the final results look like?

Friday’s qualifying session is over, which determined the order for Saturday’s qualifying sprint. Despite initial predictions, Mercedes, led by Lewis Hamilton, clearly dominated Friday’s action. He gave his pursuer a few tenths of a second!

Brazil is the third and final destination this year where we are witnessing a new race weekend format. The nineteenth round of the 2021 season kicked off with a free practice session on Friday, which was dominated by Lewis Hamilton despite an initial poor car set-up.

Friday’s performance concludes with qualifying to determine the order for Saturday’s sprint qualifying. Before that sprint, however, we have a second free practice session and the race on Sunday.

Now, back to qualifying. Unsurprisingly, both Haas drivers have failed to qualify for the second session – Nikita Mazepin will start from the very back of the grid, with his teammate Mick Schumacher ahead of him.

George Russell will start from 18th on Saturday, having been beaten to 36th by his teammate Nicholas Latifi. And ahead of the two Williams, Lance Stroll, who is currently defending his Aston Martin colours, will take to the grid.

The second part of the qualifying session also meant the end for Alfa Romeo, with Antonio Giovinazzi finishing fifteenth and Kimi Räikkönen setting the fourteenth fastest time. Júki Cunoda will start from thirteenth position on Saturday, with Sebastian Vettel and Esteban Ocon ahead of him.

Ocon, it should be noted, is just 52 thousandths of a second away from advancing to Q2! The middle part of qualifying was clearly dominated by Mercedes, with Hamilton giving third place Max Verstappen 4.3 tenths of a second!

In the final stages of qualifying, the bread was really breaking, but Verstappen’s Red Bull was ultimately no match for the pace of Hamilton’s Mercedes. He defended his first position from Q2 and Q1, giving the Dutch driver 4.3 tenths of a second again.

Valtteri Bottas set the third fastest time, with Sergio Pérez fourth on the results list. Pierre Gasly clearly brought his form from last week to Interlagos, taking his Alpha Tauri to fifth.

Both the Ferrari and McLaren monoblocs follow (Sainz 6th, Leclerc 7th, Norris 8th and Ricciardo 9th), with Fernando Alonso in the Alpine rounding out the top ten.

As we wrote above, this qualifying session determined the order for Saturday’s sprint qualifying, which in turn will determine the grid for Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

The sprint is scheduled for Saturday, November 13, with all five lights going out at 20:30.

Source: F1 Live