McLaren from another planet, Piastri in pole position of the Brazilian Sprint

McLaren confirmed just how well suited its MCL38 car is to the Interlago circuit by completely dominating qualifying practice for tomorrow’s Brazilian Sprint race. The English team went 1-2 with Oscar Piastri just 29mm faster than Lando Norris, and “locked up” the front row of the start of tomorrow’s Sprint race (2/11, 16:00).

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who trailed McLaren by 0.25 seconds, and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, another half-tenth behind, will line up on the second row. The Sprint starting six is ​​rounded out by Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari and Mercedes’ George Russell – as Lewis Hamilton was unexpectedly dropped from the top ten in the second session (SQ2).

Under the threatening Sao Paulo skies, which never opened (keeping Sprint Qualifying dry) Piastri’s achievement was even more impressive considering he beat Norris on the second fast lap on the SQ3’s only set of softs.

In particular, the two McLarens took to the track early in SQ3 as the gray clouds drew closer and the tarmac temperature dropped. But Piastri and Norris had no problem getting them warmed up properly and in time, and – led by Norris – posted the top two times in the first ten-driver fast lap.

Norris lowered the clock to 1:08.928. But even though in their second and last lap the soft rubber had already suffered enough wear, Piastri managed to find an impressive amount of speed and beat Lando by a margin of 29 millimeters. Norris aborted his second lap when he saw that his time was not good in the middle section of Interlago.

Leclerc only did one quick lap in SQ3, which was good enough for 3rd place, while in the end Max Verstappen managed to do no better than 4th.

So the Dutchman is in danger of losing his streak of wins in this year’s Sprints, as Piastri bids for his second Sprint win after last year’s Qatar race – where he also started from pole position.

In SQ2, where Norris was absolutely dominant by a huge margin, the big surprises were the disqualifications of Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez, while in SQ1 Fernando Alonso, in an Aston Martin that has long been out of contention even for average group dynamics.

Impressive were Liam Lawson and Oliver Berman, with RB and Haas respectively, who managed to enter the top ten. In fact, Berman could have been higher in the standings had his lap in SQ3 not been canceled due to exceeding the track limits. We remind you that the Englishman replaces Kevin Magnussen, who is ill.