After the incident with the drain cover at the end of Practice 3, Qualifying was delayed by half an hour. More loose drain covers were found but thanks to the work of the marshals, the drains were repaired and the delay was only 30 minutes.
It was a close fight between the two Mercedes who will start on the mediums. Valtteri Bottas took the initial lead in the early runs, and looked set for pole. After the initial second run, it looked like Bottas had it. But a last gasp effort from Hamilton, where he did a second lap on a set of tyres whilst Bottas did one run at the end, allowed him to take pole position. Max Verstappen, who will start on the softs, looked like he could challenge the Mercedes but will have to contend with third place ahead of Charles Leclerc, who once again outperformed his car to qualify in fourth on the grid, even getting to Q2 on the mediums.
Sergio Perez qualified in fifth ahead of Alexander Albon who qualified in sixth. The two McLarens locked out the fourth row with Carlos Sainz qualifying in seventh and Lando Norris qualified in eighth. Pierre Gasly ran out of sequence from the rest and qualified in ninth in the Alpha Tauri, whilst Daniel Ricciardo rounds out the top ten. The Renault did not set a time after he backed it into the wall in Q2. Despite driving back to the pits they could not fix the damage in time for him to do a run.
Esteban Ocon made a mistake on his final run and qualified in eleventh ahead of Lance Stroll, who on his return struggled to refind his feet and didn’t make Q3. Daniil Kvyat starts in thirteenth ahead of George Russell, who once again managed to sneak through to Q2 and qualified in fourteenth, ahead of the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel, who on the medium tyres could only manage fifteenth in another miserable session for the 4 time champion.
Russell’s Q2 appearance came at the expense of Kimi Raikkonen who starts in sixteenth ahead of Antonio Giovinazzi in seventeenth. Romain Grosjean starts in eighteenth ahead of Kevin Magnussen in nineteenth, with Nicholas Latifi rounding out the grid.
Here is the provisional starting grid for tomorrow’s Portuguese Grand Prix.
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