Lando Norris has claimed pole position for the sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix after a wet, wild, and utterly dramatic qualifying session Friday afternoon.
A timely downpour at the Shanghai International Circuit midway through the qualifying session triggered a major shake-up with the world’s best drivers struggling to keep their cars in-between the white lines.
In the end, McLaren’s Norris was fastest ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, while triple world champion Max Verstappen was only good enough for fourth.
TALKING POINTS: Norris eyes first win after bizarre lap deletion saga; ‘positive day’ for Ricciardo recovery
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It appeared Hamilton would be pole after Norris’ fastest time was deleted for exceeding track limits, only for it to be suddenly reinstated at the very death.
“What on earth is going on, oh my goodness,” Nico Rosberg said on Sky Sports commentary.
Meanwhile, David Croft called the session “proper treachery”.
“This is treacherous, (like) Bambi on ice skates,” he said.
It was a chaotic session that saw a number of drivers leave the track, including Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc who span out and hit the barriers.
Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda was eliminated from SQ1 with the second-slowest time of the session, while VCARB teammate Daniel Ricciardo progressed with a time a whopping half-second quicker.
“That is exactly what he needs to be doing so this is a great session for him,” Rosberg said of Ricciardo.
Tsunoda was not happy with his elimination and voiced his anger over team radio.
“There was zero grip. Honesty,” he said.
Ricciardo went on to qualify 14th-fastest, five spots ahead of Tsunoda, after rain started falling in SQ2 and prevented him from a second run.
The Australian was in no mood to celebrate, however, saying it was only a small step in the right direction.
“It’s one of those days where P14 is not an obvious result to get excited about, but personally, I think it was a much better day because we hit the ground running this morning and were in the top 10 (in practice),” he said.
“The feeling on track was definitely a bit better, so some encouragement by that … it was a positive day.”
A big crowd let out a huge roar when hometown hero Zhou Guanyu qualified 10th. Oscar Piastri was eighth in his McLaren and Zhou’s teammate Valtteri Bottas ninth to round out the top 10 on the grid for Saturday’s 19-lap shootout.
“It was tricky, you are always nervous going into a session like this. You just have to risk a lot, push and build tyre temperature and what not,” said Englishman Norris.
“I’m happy, sad it’s not for a proper qualifying, but good enough.
“You only get three laps. The first two I aborted on both, so it was all or nothing, a good position for tomorrow.”
“It was incredibly slippery,” Verstappen said. “I just struggled a lot to get the temperature in the tyres so that’s why it was very difficult to keep the car on track.
“It never really switched on for me, it was like driving on ice.”
Saturday’s sprint (1pm AEST) will be followed by qualifying (5pm AEST) to set the grid for Sunday’s 56-lap grand prix, the first in China since 2019.
Earlier, the first practice session and sprint qualifying were both interrupted by a small fire in the same spot at the edge of the track.
On Friday afternoon, red flags were shown about 15 minutes into the practice session when a patch of grass near turn seven caught on fire.
The Sky Sports commentators were left baffled by the blaze, unable to decipher what caused the fire.
“I don’t think I have ever, ever seen grass catch fire by the side of a Formula 1 track,” David Croft said. “It’s a very small grass fire at the moment. I have no idea how that would have happened.”
Stewards sprinted onto the track and extinguished the flame, with the practice session resuming a few minutes later.
But it was deja vu in SQ1 later in the day when yellow flags were forced out due to another blaze in the same spot.
“It’s on fire again, unbelievable!” Rosberg said on Sky Sports.
“In the corner there’s a big bump on the ground and all the cars are launching big sparks from under the car, and the wind is pushing the sparks into the track at that point and putting the grass on fire.
“We’ve never seen that before.”
Earlier, it was frustration for Gasly who blew up when the session came to an end for not learning anything about the circuit.
As he entered the pits he vented to his pit crew: “This is not acceptable, I haven’t learned anything. Absolutely nothing,” Gasly said.
The issue over the limited on track time was raised before the F1 world landed in Shanghai with Verstappen blasting the call to make it the first sprint race on the calendar.
“Yeah, it’s very smart to do that,” Verstappen said.
“It’s not great to do that because when you have been away from a track for quite a while, I think you never know what you’re going to experience, so it would have been better to have a normal race weekend there.
“On the other hand, it probably spices things up a bit more, and that’s maybe what they would like to see.
“But purely from a driving and performance perspective of the sport, I think it’s not the smartest thing to do. We’ll see what we get there.
“I always loved driving there, so hopefully we can hit the ground running as well as we can, and hopefully we don’t need to finetune too many things on the car.”
TOP 10 FOR SATURDAY’S SPRINT
1) Lando Norris, McLaren
2) Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
3) Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin
4) Max Verstappen, Red Bull
5) Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
6) Sergio Perez, Red Bull
7) Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
8) Oscar Piastri, McLaren
9) Valtteri Bottas, Sauber
10) Zhou Guanyu, Sauber
14) Daniel Ricciardo, VCARB