After a frustrating race last week in Hungary, Max Verstappen looked to be back in form as he was impressively quick as the session progressed and set an unbeatable lap of 1m 53.159s in the Red Bull, half a second clear of Ferrari’s Leclerc.
Sergio Perez, under heavy pressure to perform, also enjoyed a better qualifying by putting his Red Bull into P3, ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in P4.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri took fifth and sixth respectively for McLaren, with the Mercedes of George Russell following in seventh.
Carlos Sainz claimed P8 for Ferrari, while his countryman Fernando Alonso went P9 in the Aston Martin and Esteban Ocon rounded out the top-10 for Alpine.
Alex Albon only narrowly missed out on Q3 by just three thousandths of a second in the Williams, putting him in P11, and Pierre Gasly followed for Alpine in P12.
Daniel Ricciardo took 13th place in the RB, putting him ahead of Kick Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas in 14th and Lance Stroll – whose Aston Martin was repaired in time to participate after his FP3 crash – in 15th.The Haas pair of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen had a disappointing day, having both exited in Q1 in 16th and 17th, while Yuki Tsunoda was also eliminated in 18th, though the RB driver had already been set to start from the back due to an engine penalty.Logan Sargeant ended the day down in P19 for Williams, while the Kick Sauber of Zhou Guanyu followed in 20th place.
"That was a nice qualifying. Luckily the weather was ok – it was raining a little bit but at least we could do a decent qualifying," said Verstappen. "Everything worked well, every tyre set that we were on we could do good lap times and I was also of course thinking about Q3, not knowing if it was going to dry out so was trying to keep two new sets for Q3 and luckily we escaped Q1 and Q2. So, yeah, very happy. The car was working quite well in the wet so I could just do my laps and try to do clean lap times in the wet which is always quite tricky. But tomorrow I know it’s going to be quite a different day.
“Today was a positive day. We were really strong, have maximized the car and have the best possible position for tomorrow. You always try and do the best lap possible; it was wet today and the conditions tomorrow will be better and I think it will all be about tyre management. Hopefully what we did today will help us with tyre management for tomorrow, and I felt more comfortable with the wing that we chose, so I hope I can come back into the fight with the other teams. There are many other fast cars out there who are really strong and I think the McLarens will be tough to beat tomorrow. Hopefully we can fight for a position with the grid place penalty and be back in the mix and I hope that we can be competitive. We hope that it won’t hurt us too much but we will see as the weather will be different, the wind will change and we will set up the car a bit differently. So we will see and we look forward to tomorrow."