Big sensation in Brazil! Haas takes pole position from Friday’s qualifying

The last sprint weekend of the season kicked off in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with Friday’s qualifying. In variable conditions, the drivers not only battled with the monoposts, but also fought for places for the start of Saturday’s sprint. The sensational Kevin Magnussen in the Haas will start from first place, thus recording the biggest success of his career.

In the first part of qualifying the track was in a very strange condition, with no rain but some parts hiding the danger of wet spots. Despite this, the drivers gradually switched to dry tyres and the drama began to build towards the end.

For a while, the last five places were occupied by either Ferrari or Lewis Hamilton. In the end, though, the drivers who were expected to do more dropped out.

Mick Schumacher (20th), Júki Cunoda (19th), Valtteri Bottas (18th), Kuan-yü Zhou (17th) and Nicholas Latifi (16th) will start the sprint tomorrow from the last places. Surprisingly, Lando Norris in the McLaren won the opening act with a time of 1:13.106.

The middle section also brought meteorological games. Although the drivers reported drops, they were still accelerating and shuffling through the standings. Both Mercedes were in danger for a while, but they managed to save themselves in the end.

Lance Stroll (15th), Daniel Ricciardo (14th), Sebastian Vettel (13th), Pierre Gasly (12th) and Alexander Albon (11th) will start from the top five on Saturday. In the middle block of qualifying, Max Verstappen was fastest around the Brazilian circuit in 1:10.881.

The final part of qualifying brought a cloud over the circuit and heavy rain was expected. Less than four minutes later, the first big mistake of the battle for pole position came. George Russell drove part of his monoposto onto the grass at turn four and ended up in a duck.

The red flags flew for Magnussen in the Haas, who occupied the top position at the time. Indeed, raindrops did indeed get on the track during the break and their intensity increased.

And since the rain was so heavy that it didn’t allow to accelerate, it was the Danish Magnussen who became the absolute sensational winner.

For Haas, this is the best qualifying result in history. Unfortunately, Magnussen’s teammate Mick Schumacher finished last.

The sprint is scheduled for Saturday from 20:30. Behind Magnussen, Verstappen will start second. The rest of the top ten order then looks as follows – Russell third, Norris fourth, Carlos Sainz fifth, Esteban Ocon sixth, Fernando Alonso seventh, Hamilton eighth, Sergio Pérez ninth and the last spot in the top ten goes to Charles Leclerc.

Source