Lando Norris secured pole position for Sunday’s race at the United States Grand Prix, after the final Q3 laps were disrupted by George Russell’s crash, preventing Max Verstappen and others from completing their runs.

Q1
Q1 delivered a major surprise when Lewis Hamilton was knocked out, failing to improve, while his teammate George Russell managed to make progress on new soft tires. Hamilton ended up 19th, mostly due to a loss of time from oversteer exiting Turn 12, where he dropped 0.5 seconds compared to his teammate. Hamilton was in 16th before his time was deleted due to track limits, sending the seven-time champion down to 19th.

Kevin Magnussen and Lance Stroll climbed out of the elimination zone in the final moments of Q1, pushing both Williams drivers down. The Sauber drivers also exited despite their personal bests on their final laps, with Valtteri Bottas finishing 18th ahead of his former teammate Hamilton. Zhou Guanyu finished 20th.

Q2
Yuki Tsunoda failed to advance further, despite receiving a slipstream from his teammate Liam Lawson, who was carrying grid penalties and had been third fastest in Q1. Lawson was unlikely to progress further due to his penalties for additional changes to the car.

Other eliminations in Q2 included Nico Hulkenberg, who suffered a lock-up at Turn 1, as well as Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll, both of whom were unable to match Fernando Alonso’s pace to make it into Q3.

Q3
Mercedes had already faced a setback earlier in the session when Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in Q1. After the initial Q3 runs, Norris held the lead over Verstappen by just 0.031 seconds, despite a big slide in the penultimate corner. On the second attempts with fresh soft tires, Verstappen was running ahead of Norris and narrowly avoided a pitlane incident with Pierre Gasly.

However, Verstappen’s bid to overtake Norris was cut short when Russell lost control at the penultimate corner, crashing his Mercedes and bringing out yellow flags. Russell spun off at the high-speed left-hander, sliding through the gravel and hitting the barriers sideways.

The positions behind Norris remained unchanged, with Carlos Sainz taking third for Ferrari, followed by Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, and Russell.
 

Gasly is under investigation for the pitlane incident with Verstappen. For now, he qualified seventh, ahead of Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen. Sergio Perez rounded out the top ten, having lost his first lap time due to track limits at Turn 9.