Championship leader Oscar Piastri will line up on pole position in his McLaren for tomorrow’s Sprint Race, while three frontrunners - Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli - suffered early exits in today's sprint qualifying. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers drivers' reactions.

McLaren

Lando Norris, 3rd, 1:41.128

“We’ve got a good starting position for the Sprint tomorrow, however, I would of course like to be a bit further up. We’ve got some things to work on overnight, but it’s only Friday. We’ll do what we can to get the most out of the Sprint tomorrow, as well as Quali tomorrow evening.”

Oscar Piastri, 1st, 1:40.510

“I’m really pleased with that. The pace in the car has been strong all day, and I felt confident going into Sprint Qualifying. I had a little bit of a scare in SQ2, but we put it all together when we needed to, with a lap I was really happy with. We’ll see what we can do in the Sprint tomorrow before we reset for Grand Prix Qualifying.”

Red Bull

“Being P2 between the two McLarens in the Sprint Quali today was a really good result for us. I think we maximised the performance of the car and I enjoyed it out there. The lap itself was good and the gap was big but it has been big since FP1 so that is not a surprise.

"We just have to focus on ourselves and work on the balance of the car and try to go faster, we need to do our own race. With the upgrades, it is always difficult on a Sprint weekend to say exactly how they have impacted the car, but we keep improving and keep trying to find more performance. Other teams will be doing the same thing and that’s just how it goes."

“Today has not been the best, during Sprint Quali I was struggling with the drive and missed out by six hundredths of a second, the grid was very tight and I tried my best.

"Every time that you look back, which as a Team we will do today you can always see what there is to improve on, but it is still frustrating. We expected to bring some new parts to my car this race but unfortunately I have to wait a little longer, but I will continue to try my hardest until they come.

"We are working well together as an engineering team and with the package that we have in terms of the set up at the moment, but there is definitely a tight sensation with the car right now which means you really have to keep everything together."

Ferrari

"Mixed feelings today, as on the one hand, I am happy that the car feels good on track, which means that we’ve made a good step forward and achieved what we wanted through our upgrades.

"On the other hand, we are still seven tenths off pole and McLaren seem to be even faster than usual on this track. So it’s P4 for tomorrow’s Sprint, there was not much more to extract today."

"It’s been a challenging day overall, with limited time to properly evaluate the upgrades before qualifying. I was on a strong lap when I suddenly had a big rear lock-up, which caught me off guard. We’re not entirely sure what triggered it, but we’ll go through the data with the team tonight and aim to make the most of what we’ve learned ahead of tomorrow."

Haas

“It was awesome out there, I’m really happy. Well done to the whole team, we had two weeks to try and find out what went wrong in Silverstone as the car was difficult to drive, even though the update was in the right direction. Today, we transformed the car and it felt very good. It also feels amazing to have both cars in SQ3 – the first of the year – and we know it’s Sprint Quali so we need to take care and do it again tomorrow.”

“We had the choice of using the medium and soft compound, or the hard and soft in practice, so we decided upon the medium as that extra step in compound, it seemed at least for me, would make qualifying preparation quite difficult.

"I had a very good feeling from practice, I didn’t string a lap together on the softs then, but I knew there was pace in the car. I’m so happy for everyone because it’s such a great team effort to get both cars into SQ3 and Esteban did a great job as well, so it’s a very nice feeling. We brought a new upgrade in Silverstone and we reached Q3 there, and now here it seems like we have good pace again, so let’s keep that up.”

Williams

"We had an issue which we thought we’d fixed after FP1, but we were losing a lot of lap time on the straights in Sprint Qualifying, so we will need to try something different to resolve it. We generally have a good car which seems quick around this circuit, so I’m still optimistic about the weekend."

"I’m happy with P6 today. It was a big turnaround from the team and myself after missing half of FP1, so it was good to get some decent laps in during SQ. We also have some updates on the car which I still need to properly understand in order to fine tune the set-up but, overall, when everything goes to plan, we can better show our pace. Hopefully tomorrow we can keep building through the weekend!"

Alpine

“We will definitely take that result today and I am happy with our turnaround on a busy Friday. We struggled a little in Practice so we changed the set-up between the sessions and took some downforce off the car in order to maximise straight line speed.

"We had to hang on in the middle sector as a result but that is part of the challenge at Spa, finding the right balance. So, I am very pleased with the work we did as a team between the two sessions to turn things around. We squeezed into Q1 – maybe fortunate with the yellow flag for Lewis [Hamilton] at the end of the session – but that is how it goes sometimes.

"Then it was a really good lap in Q2 to reach Q3 and, in the end, eighth on the grid for the Sprint. We will go for it tomorrow and aim to come away with points.”

“We struggled today in general with the balance and the grip and we made a few changes to try and counter that, but with limited Practice running it meant we went into Sprint Qualifying not fully comfortable in the car.

"We need to go away and focus tonight on trying to understand if we can improve the situation for tomorrow and come back stronger. This is always a tough track where you need to be confident particularly in the high speed, and we knew that coming into the weekend we might need certain conditions to go our way in order to be more competitive.

"The weather forecast still seems uncertain across the weekend and, at a place like Spa, it's always difficult to predict. So hopefully that plays into our favour and creates some opportunities for tomorrow and on Sunday.”

Racing Bulls

“It was a good day here in Spa. In SQ3, we had our first attempt on the softs as we didn’t use them this morning. I didn’t really enjoy that lap as I felt more confident on the mediums, and that’s a shame, as I feel like there was definitely more than a P9.

"Looking at tomorrow, though, I think there’s an opportunity to maybe score points in the Sprint and then it will be important to qualify high in the afternoon for Sunday’s race.”

“The car has been fast, but we had a small issue in the last chicane. It's the tiny things that make a difference, so this unfortunately knocked us out. Obviously we'll take the learnings from today and try to fix them ahead of tomorrow. Like every other weekend, it's important that we extract every little bit out of the car.

"Wind changes make quite a big difference here, as it did a few weeks ago at Silverstone, but the key thing is to bring everything together as a team which is what we'll be pushing to do for the rest of the weekend."

Kick Sauber

“Sprint qualifying always comes with its own set of challenges – short format, one tyre set, and everything hinging on that first lap. Unfortunately, the initial run didn’t quite come together as planned.

"On the second attempt, I hit some traffic at the end of the warm-up lap and ended up closely following Liam, which compromised my lap. The tyres didn’t feel optimal at that point either, so overall, it just wasn’t enough.

"There’s work to do ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying for the race. We made some changes today after practice that moved us in the right direction, but there’s still more potential to unlock from the car. We'll analyse the data and aim to make the most of the Sprint.”

Gabriel Bortoleto, 10th, 1:42.176
"I'm really happy to have made it into SQ3 today: of course, this is Sprint Qualifying, but the feeling of making it through is always good. The car felt solid throughout the session – I feel I could have even squeezed out something more in SQ3.

"But overall, it was a strong qualifying performance, and getting into the top ten is always encouraging. The car seems strong, so now we will need to see how the race pace holds up tomorrow. If we put everything together, we should be able to fight for those same positions in the next sessions."

Mercedes

"We had good pace in FP1, but I ran through a lot of the gravel thrown up by Kimi’s off in SQ1. In the rest of that segment of Sprint Qualifying, and my lap in SQ2, the car didn’t respond as it was before. We therefore need to pick through the data and look at the car to see if we suffered any damage.

"Obviously, it is a shock to be knocked out in P13 and not something we were predicting as we headed into the session. I am sure, given the size of the gap to our usual competitors, that there is a reason we will find for this deficit.

"Our attention now turns to tomorrow. We will hopefully be able to show more of the pace that we saw in FP1. Whilst scoring points in the Sprint will be difficult, we know the most important parts of the weekend are still to come with Qualifying and the Grand Prix itself. We will be working hard to put in a performance more representative of ourselves then."

"It was a shame to have our Sprint Qualifying session go the way it did. The car was good in FP1 and in the first half of my first lap in SQ1, it was feeling even better.

"Unfortunately, I got a little bit greedy on the throttle at turn 14 and had a spin through the gravel. I picked up damage from that and, despite trying my best on my second lap, the performance wasn’t there in the car to do anymore than we saw.

"It is a shame as we had the potential for a lot more today. It was a mistake from my side but now we will focus on getting the car in a good place for tomorrow’s Qualifying session."

Aston Martin

"It is always nice to come back to such an iconic track. The weather stayed dry, and SQ1 turned out to be our strongest session. We were right on the limit, and I gave it everything I had. Unfortunately, we couldn't carry that pace into SQ2.

"We were able to test the new front wing, which gave us more downforce. We will continue to keep learning from this new configuration in tomorrow's Sprint race and across the rest of the weekend."

Lance Stroll, 15th, 1:42.832
"It's great being back in Belgium, I always enjoy it here. Spa is just one of those tracks that is really special to come back to every year – it's got those high-speed, fast corners where you really feel the car come alive so I’m looking forward to the weekend.

"We managed to get a clean lap in SQ1, SQ2 was a bit more challenging – I had a couple of snaps and also picked up some damage to the floor, so starting the Sprint Race tomorrow from P15. We'll see what we can do."