SQ1

After just one free practice session, the drivers headed straight into sprint qualifying, since the United States Grand Prix weekend includes a sprint race on Saturday.

The session started slowly with all drivers running on a mandatory medium compound tyre.

A shocking early exit suffered Oscar Piastri and will start from disappointing sixteenth place in tomorrow’s sprint race. The McLaren driver firstly improved his final lap and briefly placed seventh, but his time was deleted soon after for violating track limits in Turn 18.

Just a few moments before Piastri exceeded track limits, Alex Albon spun at the same corner, which has caught out several drivers. Due to that he wasn’t able to improve his time and finished eighteenth.

On the other hand, Albon’s teammate Franco Colapinto, managed to improve his lap and amazingly got through to SQ2.

Esteban Ocon was another driver to join the worst top 5, placing himself between Piastri and Albon in P17 for tomorrow.

Saubers traditionally ended the session together in the last two places, with Valtteri Bottas being a bit faster than Guanyu Zhou.

SQ2

In the second part of the sprint qualifying Ferrari and Mercedes were the teams setting the pace with Verstappen trying to catch up.

With only two 2 minutes left to SQ2, both Aston Martin and RB drivers, same as Pierre Gasly and Sergio Perez, still had no time set.

Sergio Perez then set a time which wasn’t enough to get to SQ3 as his Red Bull seat contender Yuki Tsunoda managed to beat him in his RB. The Mexican has to settle down with starting P11 tomorrow.

Exits also suffered Ricciardo’s fresh replacement Liam Lawson, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and both Aston Martins with Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso lining up in P13 and P14, respectively.

SQ3

Yellow flags were waved briefly in the third part of the sprint qualifying after Colapinto spun at Turn 12. With that, the Argentinian driver caused issues for Hamilton, who was then half a second slower than his teammate Russell.

Max Verstappen claimed the sprint pole by a slim margin of 0.012 seconds ahead of George Russell, who will line up alongside the Dutchman on the front row.

Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris took third and fourth, forming the second row, with second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz completing the top 5.

Lewis Hamilton had to settle down with seventh after Nico Hulkenberg placed his Haas in brilliant sixth place. 

It was a good day for Haas as the second car of Kevin Magnussen took eight, followed by Yuki Tsunoda in ninth.

Franco Colapinto completed the top ten as he wasn’t able to improve after his incident because the sprint qualifying only allows drivers to use one set of tyres during each part.