The rains finally let up as the stewards managed to sneak the F1 qualifying session into the weekend at the Russian GP. Mercedes did dominate the 60-minute session from start to end. But, were they the ones to secure the pole in the end? Well, it’s Lando Norris!

Behind the Briton came his former McLaren teammate, Carlos Sainz, with George Russell claiming yet another top-3 start for Williams.

As Norris raced his way to pole, it was the much anticipated ecstatic celebration from the McLaren driver. The moment his race engineer affirmed the news, Norris ended up screaming, “yeah! Baby, come on, let’s go!”

Q3- Late drama for pole at Russian GP

Hamilton pulled off a blistering ap to go P1 with a 1:44:050, around 0.7s faster than Norris and Bottas. But, his lap was far from safe, as, with the track evolving, there were a lot of strategic gambles impending. Russell was the first of the lot to sport a set of slick tires.

What followed was a wave of F1 drivers rushing into the pits for soft tires. One of them being Hamilton, who ended up hitting the wall while entering the pit lane, creating late drama into the session.

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Norris capitalized on the mishap, consequently pulling off an absolute masterclass to claim his first-ever pole in Formula 1.

Q2- AlphaTauri heartbreak, Russell masterclass & more

Bottas was the quickest of all after setting a 1:45:506, almost 0.5s ahead of his teammate. However, the Briton bit back with a 1:45:406 to go fastest of all. But, most of the action was unfolding down at the bottom of the 15-driver timesheet.

Russell managed to escape the elimination to secure yet another Q3 appearance for Williams. Unfortunately, Vettel wasn’t as lucky as the German ended up P11, 0.05s behind Sainz in 10th place. Along with Vettel, Gasly, Tsunoda, Latifi, and Leclerc failed to make it into Q3.

Gasly, in particular, was absolutely fuming, as the Frenchman was seen hitting the halo while strolling his way into the pits.

Q1- Verstappen suffers first F1 qualifying DNS

The rain had just given up, but that didn’t seem for long as most of the teams warned their drivers of more rains in the offing. Hence, all of the drivers except Verstappen were setting lap times and lap times. The Dutchman, bearing the engine grid penalty, opted against hitting the track.

Therefore, Verstappen secured P20 behind the Alfa Romeo and Haas duo. Raikkonen secured P16 while his teammate, Giovinazzi secured P18, with Schumacher sandwiching the two drivers to claim P17. Mazepin ended his qualifying session in P19.

Overall, after looking like the session might not even go ahead, we could deem ourselves lucky to have managed to witness it in the end. And now, all that stands between us and a result out of the Russian GP is the main race. So, will the race go uninterrupted like qualifying, or are we in for a complicated Sunday afternoon at Sochi?

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