Hamilton will start ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas after the one-hour qualifying session, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.
The first session, when all cars are on track together, was delayed by 10 minutes due to barrier repairs.
Once it got going, Bottas set the early pace at 1m18.005s on medium tyres, 0.085s faster than Verstappen who was using softs. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly was third quickest, ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Hamilton, who was a quarter of a second off the pace in sixth.
McLaren’s Lando Norris, whose first run was ruined by traffic, took P1 at his second attempt with 1m17.821s, which was 0.184s faster than Bottas. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc leapt up to third on a second run, just 0.036s off Bottas’s time.
Falling at the first hurdle were AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda (who ran wide on what should’ve been his fastest lap), Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen, Mick Schumacher (Haas), Nicholas Latifi (who lost part of his Williams’ underside after running wide at Turn 9) and the second Haas of Nikita Mazepin.
In Q2, the pole position-hunting protagonists eschewed the usual practice of running medium tyre – as they wanted to save them for the race, so the top-10 cars will all start the race on softs.
Verstappen unleashed the true pace of his Red Bull, producing a lap of 1m16.922s that was almost half a second clear of Bottas after the first runs. Hamilton was 0.71s off in third, and he had Norris right behind him.
Everyone apart from Verstappen ran again, with both Mercedes improving their times – Bottas getting to within 0.22s of the pace, with Hamilton close behind him despite using a set of tyres he’d scrubbed-in during Q1. Sainz jumped up for fourth, ahead of Perez.
Knocked out at this point were Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, Gasly, the second Aston of Sebastian Vettel, Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo) and George Russell (Williams, who’d run out of fresh soft tyres).
In the top-10 shootout, Hamilton set the bar at 1m16.741s, just missing yellow flags for Perez spinning at Turn 13 after he dipped his tyres into the gravel on turn-in.
Verstappen was second fastest, 0.036s down, with Bottas a further tenth back in third. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon was best of the rest, ahead of Sainz and McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo.
On the final runs, Hamilton had a big moment at the final chicane and didn’t improve, but neither did Verstappen nor Bottas, so Hamilton’s 100th career pole was confirmed.
Leclerc improved on his second run to jump up to fourth, ahead of Ocon, Sainz, Ricciardo, Perez, Norris and Alpine’s Fernando Alonso.
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