Piastri masters qualifying to take Barcelona pole position
The fastest man of the morning continued to be the best in today's qualifying as Oscar Piastri controlled qualifying to take pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix. Lando Norris ensured McLaren had both cars on the front row while Verstappen secured third.
With track temperatures up at 48°C at Barcelona and the soft tyre not particularly long lasting a slow in-lap was a crucial affair for qualifying. Albon and Stroll opted to go out ahead of the usual surge with Stroll emerged as the fastest of the two.
3 minutes into the session, when one driver was signalled to go out, most other followed. Verstappen, Alonso and the Ferrari duo were the only four to wait a little bit longer, going out only a couple minutes later.
All in all it resulted in total silence on track 6 minutes from the end of the session, by which Oscar Piastri had recorded the fastest lap, a solid two tenths quicker than Verstappen who edged out Norris by 0.001s. Russell set 4th, then Leclerc, Albon, Alonso, Hamilton, Hadjar and Bearman.
Less than two minutes later the pitlane was filled again with queing cars, but when Colapinto was strangely holding up everyone it emerged he was struggling with a clutch issue. Sainz was the first to escape the queue and get to the track and when Colapinto moved a few meters, Hamilton was also able to turn out of the queue and pass the Alpine. Several others followed before Colapinto eventually got his car going, only to park it further down his out lap.
Meanwhile Bearman comfortably beat his teammate to make it through to Q2. Bortoleto improved as well and bumped out Hulkenberg. Sainz and Tsunoda were also kicked out after disappointing performances.
In Q2 we saw Albon and Bearman out on track first, with Albon emerging as the faster of them two. Fernando Alonso was there as well, doing a fairly quick outlap on soft tyres only to return to the pitlane immediately.
Stroll was the next driver to set a timed lap but it was really Verstappen behind him who mattered as he improved to first. Gasly had a solid effort that would prove good enough to stay ahead of Antonelli and the Racing Bulls, good for 8th after everyone has set their first times.
Piastri was again fastest, followed by Norris. Verstappen's early lap was still good for 3rd, followed by Russell, Hamilton, Leclerc, Alonso and then Gasly.
As the top 5 remained in the pits, the rest opted to go out for another lap to try to make it into the top 10. Hadjar strongly improved to 6th, settling in between the Ferrari duo, kicking out Albon, along with Bortoleto, Lawson, Stroll and Bearman.
The final section was more of the same story with the McLarens easily ahead. Piastri set his lap first and had to make it out of the way quickly as Norris was right behind him to start his lap as Piastri ended his. Russell ended up third, followed by Leclerc and Verstappen.
Next up was Alonso who went for a single out lap. Enjoying the crowd's attention the Spaniard put in a faultless lap that was at the time good for 5th, 0.465s slower than Piastri but even faster than Verstappen's first lap. He was absolutely chuffed with the lap and waved the crowd as he returned to the pits.
Close to the session's end, Hadjar and Gasly sort of dampened the Spanish dream quickly with Hamilton and Verstappen later also making strides to relegate Alonso to 10th.
Piastri however was the man of Saturday with another solid improvement on his final lap to take pole position. Norris secured a McLaren front row while Verstappen recovered from a disappointing first lap in Q3 to be in 3rd, ready to jump into any opportunity that might arise in the race.
