QUALIFYING ONE

With sunshine, moderate 4 m/s breeze, a track temperature of 34 degrees C and air temperature of 21 degrees C conditions were near perfect for qualifying.

About 14 minutes into the session with eight times on the board, Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) put two wheels onto the grass and spun into the barriers. Yellow flags came out but did not go to Red as Lance kept going and limped back to the pits.

All the drivers did at least two runs, some second runs on used tyres as was the case for the two Mclaren drivers. For the first time in the weekend Oscar Piastri was ahead of Lando Norris by 0.131 seconds.

The drivers eliminated were Franco Colapinto (Alpine), Nico Hulkenberg (Kick Sauber), Esteban Ocon (Haas), Oliver Bearman (Haas) and Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) with no time set.

QUALIFYING TWO

Seeing fifteen beautiful F1 cars jockeying for position and seemingly on rails into the various twists and bends of the circuit was a glorious spectacle. The slowest thirteen of them were within just over half of a second of each other.

Spectacles aside, five drivers had to be eliminated. They were Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull), Gabriel Bortoleto (Kick Sauber), Pierre Gasly (Alpine) and Alex Albon (Williams). Yuki Tsunoda and Gabriel Bortoleto even set identical times of 1:09.622.

QUALIFYING THREE or Top Ten Shootout

Only three drivers did their fastest lap on their first timed lap in the last 10 minutes. The two McLaren drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri (more on that later), and Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin). The other seven drivers improved on second timed laps.

The top ten drivers’ times throughout the qualifying periods-

All the drivers’ qualifying times-

And Graphically-

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri

Throughout the weekend, Lando consistently demonstrated a faster pace than Oscar. During Q1, however, Oscar completed a second timed lap and, for the first time, recorded a time ahead of Lando, who did not finish his second timed attempt.

When it came to Q3 their first and only timed laps looked identical, and the leader board showed Oscar ahead by 0.012 seconds.

Delving into the telemetry showed this picture-

The red and dashed purple lines are speed of the cars as indicated on the left Y axis relative to the circuit turns on the x axis. The blue and green lines are the distance ahead of the other car in metres. Had the cars been on the circuit at the same time, the blue line would show how many metres Lando was ahead of Oscar. The green line shows how many meters Oscar would be ahead of Lando.

Starting over the Start/Finish line Lando carried 2 km/h speed advantage to Oscar, 320 to 318 km/h. Lando was faster through to turn 3 where Oscar was faster through to turn 8. Lando was then faster from turn 8 to turn 12, gaining 22+ metres to be more than 6 car lengths ahead. For the remainder of the lap, Oscar was faster than Lando to finish a mere 0.012 seconds in front.

What distance does 0.012 seconds represent at the speeds these cars were traveling? The answer to that is –

744 mm after traveling 4258.256 meters.

Such a small margin but well done, Oscar Piastri.

Norman