Carlos Sainz will start ninth and Fernando Alonso, who collided with Esteban Ocon, will start fifteenth
MADRID, 4 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The British driver Lando Norris (McLaren) achieved pole this Saturday for the sprint race of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the Formula 1 World Championship, while the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) and Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) , who suffered a collision with Esteban Ocon, will start ninth and fifteenth, respectively.
On a morning at Interlagos marked by the incident between Alonso and Ocon, which forced the red flag to fly and extend the session, Norris set a 1:10.622 in his last attempt that earned him command of the time table in the final SQ3 of the ‘Sprint Shootout’, beating the Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull) by 61 thousandths.
Things were much worse for the two Ferraris, with the Monegasque Charles Leclerc settling for a seventh starting position for the Saturday race and with Carlos Sainz only able to be ninth.
The Asturian, for his part, lived a day to forget later touching in SQ1 with the Frenchman Esteban Ocon (Alpine). Alonso’s former teammate was coming back and ran into the Spaniard in the ‘s’ area of Senna; His car moved, collided with Alonso’s car and went straight into the wall. “Fernando, you idiot,” he said over the radio as the red flag waved on the track.
The two-time world champion also destroyed his suspension and, although he managed to overcome the first round, his mechanics could not solve the AMR23 problem for the second; The Spaniard could not set time and said goodbye to the classification early. “We collided, I have damage. I think he went against me,” said Alonso. Thus, he will start fifteenth.
With Norris and Verstappen on the front row of the grid, the Mexican Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez (Red Bull) and the British George Russell (Mercedes), third and fourth respectively, will start on the second row. The ‘Top 10’ was completed, in order, by the British Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), the Japanese Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri), Leclerc, the Australian Daniel Ricciardo (AlphaTauri), Sainz and the Australian Oscar Piastri (McLaren).