Qualification in Miami brought a huge fight until the very end! Who took pole position?

For the first time in F1 history, the Miami Grand Prix is being held in Florida. Drivers caught each other several times during practice on the track with slow corners and fast passages, and qualifying could be very interesting. And it was, with the winner and pole position holder decided after a tough battle at the very end.

It was clear from the start that only four monoblocs would make it out of the first part of qualifying. Esteban Ocon collided hard with the wall in the third practice session and the Alpina mechanics were unable to put the car back together.

However, the battle for the 15th place was traditionally very tough. And in that fight was seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

He was still in 18th place with two minutes to go, fighting to move on to Q2. But in the end, he was able to handle the situation and finished fifth. This meant that both Williams’ Latifi and Albon, Kuan-yu Zhou in the Alfa Romeo and Kevin Magnussen in the Haas were out of Q1 along with Ocon.

The middle part of the battle for pole position offered an interesting battle for tenth place, which secured a place in Q3. At the end, only 86 thousandths of a second separated tenth-placed Pierre Gasly and thirteenth-placed Sebastian Vettel!

The classic Red Bull and Ferrari monoblocs were showing great pace and were the favourites for the battle for the top of the standings.

Q3 offered great drama right from the first quick attempts at the front. In fact, there was only eight hundredths of a second between first Max Verstappen and third Carlos Sainz. Behind this trio, only fourth-placed Pérez and fifth-placed Bottas were under one second.

It was Verstappen who was knocked out of contention right at the end of the last part of qualifying at the start of his lap. His mistake allowed Leclerc and Sainz to take the first two places on the grid for Sunday’s race.

Valtteri Bottas again set a great lap, starting on the third row alongside Lewis Hamilton.

You can then see the full results of Saturday’s qualifying in the attached Twitter post above.

The Miami Grand Prix is scheduled as standard for Sunday, with all five lights going out at 21:30.

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