Norris takes pole in chaotic rain qualifying, Verstappen 17th

McLaren’s Lando Norris prevailed in qualifying at Formula One’s Brazilian Grand Prix, while Red Bull driver Max Verstappen was eliminated in second qualifying after one of the wet session’s many red flags was disputed.

George Russell will start second for Mercedes this afternoon’s rescheduled race, while Yuki Tsunoda will be third for RB as Verstappen’s penalty for an engine change means he will start 17th – behind Lewis Hamilton, who retired in Q1.

In the third quarter, Norris was in the lead after the first runs on the intermediate tires with a time of 1:25.631 minutes. The cars were fueled up for a long drive as the teams expected the intermittent rain to become heavier again.

He improved his time to 1:24.158 minutes and overtook Williams’ Alex Albon and Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren before Fernando Alonso became the second Aston Martin driver of the session to suffer an accident – the Spaniard lost his car in the steep Turn 11 on the left End of the middle sector.

With seven minutes to go the drivers lined up to try again and their first attempts on track brought no improvement as they raised the tire temperatures – Russell, Piastri and Tsunoda all had moments, with the latter two spinning out.

But before any purple sectors could be registered, Albon crashed heavily at Turn 1 – appearing to brake on the wet white line while simultaneously wondering if he had a braking problem. A spin into the guard rails destroyed the rear of his Williams and caused a fifth red flag.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The teams then pursued two different approaches: The McLarens drove two laps with full energy and improved the pole time with both – first to 1:24.092 minutes and finally to 1:23.405 minutes.

Piastri failed to improve on his first attempt, then stalled in Turn 1 and went off track on his final lap, meaning the drivers who remained in the pits with their spares in the tire covers for an extra time and only If they had time to run, they could win.

First, Liam Lawson came in second before being pushed back to fifth by Tsunoda and Norris, while Esteban Ocon – a two-lap runner for the final attempts – moved into fourth for Alpine.

Charles Leclerc ended up sixth as the Ferrari leader after arriving at Turn 1 with a yellow flag for Piastri on his final lap, while Albon moved up to seventh but was still ahead of Piastri.

The crashed Astons of Alonso and Lance Stroll finished ninth and tenth – the latter did not take part in Q3 due to his early incident in the second quarter.

This was a significant mini-session for the title contenders as Norris was in 11th place and was on the verge of a surprise exit when Carlos Sainz crashed at Turn 1, jeopardizing his progress – Norris also struggled with the full wet tires in Q1 , before Piastri took over the move to Inters in the middle segment.

But Norris was able to catch up on his first lap out of the pits on the breaks as Q2 resumed and then went even faster while Verstappen failed to improve and was pushed into the drop zone along with teammate Sergio Perez.

Both Red Bull drivers then found themselves on the wrong side when the red flag was called for the second time and they had less than a minute down – caused by Stroll’s accident in Turn 3.

During one of the many delays that followed, Verstappen annoyed reporters about the timing of Stroll’s interruption. But even if a red flag had been raised within five seconds of the incident, an improvement by Leclerc would still have left him in eleventh place seconds after the accident and would not have enough time for a final lap due to Red Bull’s pit position had at the beginning of the pit lane.

Stroll’s red flag also eliminated Valtteri Bottas in 11th place – the Finn’s best qualifying result since his 10th place in China – as well as the already eliminated Sainz and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

Verstappen led the first qualifying session where Franco Colapinto crashed midway through the race, which meant a difficult end to the session for the rest as the rain became heavier and times only really started to improve towards the end.

Norris made it to 15th, while Lawson’s late improvement eliminated Hamilton, who was furious at “that damn car”.

Oliver Bearman and Nico Hülkenberg also didn’t make any progress in a session when Bottas unsuccessfully switched to Inters before the red flag. Bottas’ teammate Zhou Guanyu had the chance to eliminate Norris, but the Sauber driver’s last lap was only enough for the end.