Carlos Sainz claimed his first ever pole position in Formula 1 on a soaking Silverstone Circuit for the British GP. The Spaniard starts his 150th race in F1 tomorrow, as he made his debut in 2015 alongside Max Verstappen. Sainz also became the 104th different pole sitter in F1 since its inception in 1950. Sainz’s Ferrari will be accompanied by Max Verstappen’s Red Bull on the front row for the start of the British Grand Prix tomorrow, and their teammates Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez will line up on the second row of the grid. Championship leader Max Verstappen looked set to claim pole in the early stages of the rain affected qualifying, but was displaced at the end of Q3 by less than a tenth of a second. Charles Leclerc was also going strong in the session, but a mistake in the last lap took away his shot at a pole position.
Mercedes also had a strong showing earlier in qualifying, but the drivers couldn’t put together a good lap owing to the changing weather at the end despite the multiple upgrades the team has brought in this weekend. Lewis Hamilton managed to put his W13 in P5, while George Russel could only manage P8. Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso were P6 and P7, while Zhou Guanyu surprised in P9, his best qualifying result in F1. Williams on the other hand had a mixed result in qualifying. The British outfit has brought 12 upgrades for its home Grand Prix, but were only able to fit it to Alex Albon’s car due to the lack of spare parts. Strangely, Nicholas Latifi out qualified Albon’s Williams and even made it to Q3, marking his first appearance in the top 10 in qualifying while Albon got knocked out in Q1.
It started raining just minutes before qualifying got underway at Silverstone, throwing a curveball to the teams’ strategies. It was previously predicted that it will start raining after qualifying was completed, but in typical British fashion, the rain kept coming in and going out, making it extremely tricky for drivers to find the perfect time to do their flying laps. Apart from Albon, both the Haases and Aston Martins got eliminated in Q1. Alpha Tauri was the only team that didn’t bring any upgrades to its cars this weekend, but its drivers did enough to put their cars in Q2, with Gasly up in P11 and Tsunoda in P13. Valtteri Bottas will line up his Alfa Romeo in P12 tomorrow, with Ricciardo and Ocon wrapping up the top 15.
2022 F1 Round 10 British GP Qualifying Results: