[Pole Position 2012 Indir (Full PC)
Abdul Soumphonphakdy
The Dutchman had provisionally put himself into pole in the first runs of Q3, having set a time of 1m 27.241s, and this proved to be enough to maintain the position. Charles Leclerc will join the Red Bull driver on the front row, while his Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz was not far behind in third.
Sergio Perez sealed P4 in the other Red Bull, ahead of the McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in fifth and sixth respectively, and the fourth row belongs to the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton in P7 and P8.
Verstappen joined the fray a little later and raised concerns over the sound of the clutch in his RB20 upon leaving the pits for his out lap, but this did not prevent the Dutchman from going fastest with a time of 1m 28.023s as Q1 approached its halfway point, displacing Sainz at the top.
In the final minutes, yet another queue had formed in the pit lane as everybody prepared for their all-important last flying laps. Perez slotted himself into P1 and returned to the pits, while the rest of the pack were on track as many battled to avoid being eliminated from the session.
After an initially quiet start to Q2, a flurry of cars soon headed out on track. Leclerc set the pace as the first timed laps were put on the board, with the Monegasque pumping in a time of 1m 27.533s.
Ahead of the crucial flying laps, some big names lingered in the elimination zone, including Hamilton and both Aston Martin drivers. Interestingly, Norris opted to take a gamble by bolting on the medium compound for his final run.
Verstappen was the man to secure provisional pole position during the initial runs, with the Red Bull setting a lap of 1m 27.241s which put him 0.141s clear of Leclerc in second, while Sainz had gone third fastest.
Hamilton was pushed down to eighth, having looked to be fighting his Mercedes during his lap. Meanwhile Race Control had noted a potential impeding incident involving Hulkenberg and Sainz, though soon announced that there would be no further investigation.
All eyes soon turned to the final flying runs as the last minutes of the session arrived. While Norris swapped to the soft rubber this time, the Silver Arrows duo of Hamilton and Russell had both switched to medium tyres.
Despite setting a purple first sector, Verstappen failed to improve on his earlier lap but this proved to be enough to keep him in P1, with others also not going faster. This included Leclerc, who kept P2 ahead of team mate Sainz in P3.
This puts the 29-year-old in a strong position to recover the points lost from his Jeddah absence. A good start for the Ferrari pairing could give the strategists at Maranello plenty of options to consider. Tyre degradation could make both one and two-stop strategies viable tomorrow.
I think you can see it both ways. I think if you would have told me two weeks ago when I got the appendix removed that I would be in Australia ready to go again and fighting for pole position, I would have 100% taken it.
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Denny Hamlin earned pole position at Watkins Glen today with a blistering lap in the final round of qualifying. It is Denny's fourth pole of the season and the 40th of his NASCAR Cup career. This will be the second time Hamlin starts on pole at Watkins Glen, where he has one victory in 2016. William Byron joins Hamlin on the front row, as the battle between Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports rolls on.
Row 2 features last week's winner Michael McDowell, and Ty Gibbs, who qualified on pole for today's Xfinity series race. Row 3 is oozing with talent in former Watkins Glen winners Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger. Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick will start from Row 4 while Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie rounded out the top-ten in qualifying. Bubba Wallace currently occupies one of the final Playoff spots, and will start from Row 6 tomorrow on the outside of Joey Logano. Two-time race winner Chris Buescher and Playoff spot contender Daniel Suarez will line up just behind them.
Chase Elliott just missed out on advancing to the final round of qualifying and will start 15th tomorrow. The 2020 Cup champion needs to win tomorrow or next weekend at Daytona to make it into the Playoffs this year. This is arguably his strongest track, and the numbers back that up. In his last four races at Watkins Glen, Elliott has two wins, two poles, a runner-up finish, and a fourth place result last year with 161 total laps led.
There are plenty of high-profile drivers that will be starting towards the back of the field tomorrow. Martin Truex Jr starts 19th, Ross Chastain 22nd, Ryan Blaney 23rd, Brad Keselowski 24th, Chase Briscoe 26th, and Kevin Harvick 34th. Even the road course ringers like Mike Rockenfeller (21st) and Andy Lally (29th) found themselves off the pace today in qualifying.
This will be the 40th Cup race at Watkins Glen, and while the pole sitter has only won once in the last 13 races here, qualifying is crucial. In the last 12 races, 11 have been won by a driver starting in the first three rows. Track position will be key, with no stage cautions possibly making it difficult for drivers to close the gap to the front of the field on Sunday.
With a track-record lap of 1 minute, 32.656 seconds in the No. 31 V-Series.R at Daytona International Speedway, Derani put the reigning Grand Touring Prototype championship team on pole position to open the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
LMP2: Ben Keating qualified first for United Autosports USA in the No. 2 ORECA LMP2 07. Keating, who also is part of the No. 85 Porsche lineup in the GTP category, will start on the LMP2 pole at Daytona for the second consecutive year after beating Nick Boulle (No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA) by a tenth of a second.
Max Verstappen completed a personal super Shanghai Saturday to claim Red Bull's landmark 100th F1 pole position as Lewis Hamilton suffered a shock early exit and qualified 18th for Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix.
Hours after Verstappen and Hamilton finished first and second respectively in an entertaining first Sprint race of the season, the pair's days went in polar opposite directions around the challenging Shanghai International Circuit in the qualifying session to set the grid for Sunday's main Grand Prix on Sunday, live at 8am on Sky Sports F1.
While Verstappen dominated dry qualifying for the Grand Prix to extend his run of poles to five at the start of the 2024 season, and career-best sequence of six overall, in a Red Bull front-row lockout with team-mate Sergio Perez, Hamilton dropped out in Q1 after a mistake at the hairpin on his final attempt and will start on the grid's penultimate row.
While Verstappen absolutely dominated the hour and topped all three knockout segments, Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso threatened to deny Red Bull a front-row lockout and held a provisional second place after the first Q3 runs.
Perez proved 0.166s faster on the final attempts to move ahead of the Spaniard, although Alonso reckoned second would have been his had he not "lost two tenths in two corners" at the start of his own last lap.
It could have been worse for Sainz, though, after he crashed at the final corner early in Q2 before being able to drag his car, minus its nosecone, back to the pits for repairs under the red flag that followed the accident.
After Hamilton's shock early exit, George Russell progressed to Q3 in the sister Mercedes but could only qualify eighth - 0.773s away from the dominant Verstappen as the team's disappointing start to 2024 continued.
Haas' Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber's Valtteri Bottas impressed behind to take ninth and 10th places respectively, the latter appearing in Q3 for the first time this season on a much-needed improved weekend for Sauber.
Although his wait for his own first top-10 berth of 2024 continues, under-pressure Daniel Ricciardo's season continues to pick up in China as he followed up outqualifying RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda for the Sprint by doing the same for Sunday's Grand Prix.
No one has won at the Shanghai International Circuit - which is staging its first race this weekend since the Covid-19 pandemic - more often than six-time victor Hamilton but the Briton's hopes of a strong result on Sunday on the race's return now look remote.
Although he qualified an unexpected second in Friday's qualifying session for the Sprint, that was in the wet and the conditions allowed Hamilton, one of the sport's recognised 'rain masters', the chance to transcend his inconsistent car's limitations.
He then continued to run at the front in the short-form Sprint, leading the first eight laps of the 19-lap dash after overtaking the pole-sitting Norris before being overhauled by Verstappen in the significantly quicker Red Bull.
Already in the Q1 drop zone after his first lap had proved to be off the pace, the Briton was on course to progress to Q2 as he reached the final sector of his crucial final attempt, but a lock-up under braking sent him wide at the final hairpin.
"This morning George [Russell] and I had very similar cars but this afternoon we're trying to experiment still with the car so I went one way a long way and he went the other way just to see if we could find anything.
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