Spanish GP: Lando Norris stuns Max Verstappen in thrilling Barcelona pole battle

Lando Norris took a thrilling pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix, pipping Max Verstappen by two hundredths of a second in a gripping session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will line up behind on Sunday, with McLaren driver Norris putting together an excellent lap to beat Verstappen on Saturday in yet another entertaining qualifying session in the 2024 season.

Lando Norris takes stunning pole for the Spanish Grand Prix

The session started moments after Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc were both reprimanded for FP3 incidents with Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris respectively, escaping penalties for qualifying so they could take part without fear of dropping down the grid.

One person having a penalty hanging over him, however, was Sergio Perez, who will drop three places on Sunday after driving his car back to the pit lane last time out in Canada in an unsafe condition, after crashing on a drying track.

A 1:13.090 was the opening gambit from the Red Bull driver, but Max Verstappen went much faster than that in Q1 – a 1:12.306 comfortably the fastest time seen over the weekend so far.

Lando Norris was not far behind, though, only 0.080s down on the reigning World Champion as the fight for pole looked on early in the session, with Leclerc then pipping Verstappen’s time and home hero Carlos Sainz – fastest in FP3 – going a tenth behind.

But Q1 was all about losing the slowest five drivers from qualifying, with the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya a hive of activity in the final moments of the opening session as the drivers battled to avoid the drop zone.

Alex Albon went first and moved his Williams up to 12th initially, but the flurry of laps afterwards would see him and team-mate Logan Sargeant both relegated to the back row of the grid come sessions end.

Both RB drivers, Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, will line up on the ninth row of the grid together, while the Haas of Kevin Magnussen also dropped out – just half a tenth behind the Aston Martin of Stroll, who made it through to Q2 in another extremely tight Q1 session between the whole field.

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A highly-competitive Q2 would await, too, with Alpine looking to back up their practice pace in particular along with Aston Martin to see who could be the drivers that could join those from the fastest four teams of Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes in Q3 – or at least that’s what the form book would predict.

At the front, the drivers dropped into the 1:11s as their pace and the grip on track ramped up, Verstappen clocking a 1:11.653, two tenths ahead of Norris, who in turn was two thousandths ahead of his former McLaren team-mate Sainz on their first runs.

Lewis Hamilton, on used tyres for his first run, was 13th and in need of another go to get his way into the top 10 – with all eyes on the final flying laps of Q2 to see who would make the cut for the top 10 shootout.

Perez had dropped into the bottom five by the time he got to the line but was able to improve to P7, with both Alpine drivers having got themselves into the top 10 in an impressive showing.

Those to miss out were Fernando Alonso in 11th, Valtteri Bottas, Nico Hulkenberg, the sister Aston Martin of Stroll and Zhou Guanyu in the Sauber. But such was the closeness of Q2, Verstappen’s benchmark time in the session and Alonso in P11 were only 0.475s apart,

Onwards to Q3 and the showing from Verstappen in Q2 appeared to make him slight favourite for pole, but the closeness of the pack meant who would actually take the P1 grid slot was still highly competitive.

A 1:11.673 was Verstappen’s opener, two tenths clear of the highest-ranked home driver in Sainz, but McLaren driver Norris went quicker than the Red Bull driver through the first two sectors. He lost time through the final part of the lap, however, and slotted in second place.

Hamilton was also marginally up on Verstappen through the first two sectors, but like Norris lost a little bit of time in the third sector to be third quickest after the first runs – with the top six drivers within 0.276s heading into the final runs of Spanish Grand Prix qualifying.

Oscar Piastri had been up on Verstappen’s best through the first two sectors, but ran wide into the gravel at Turn 12 and lost momentum on his lap, meaning he did not clock a time in Q3.

Both Sainz and Leclerc were also able to improve, but not enough to topple Verstappen, who improved further to put himself three tenths clear.

But Norris continued, and stole pole from the reigning World Champion by two hundredths of a second in Spain – with the Mercedes duo separated by two thousandths of a second to line up on the second row.

Spanish Grand Prix 2024: Qualifying classification

1 Lando NORRIS McLaren 1:11.383
2 Max VERSTAPPEN Red Bull +0.020
3 Lewis HAMILTON Mercedes +0.318
4 George RUSSELL Mercedes +0.320
5 Charles LECLERC Ferrari +0.348
6 Carlos SAINZ Ferrari +0.353
7 Pierre GASLY Alpine +0.474
8 Sergio PEREZ Red Bull +0.678*
9 Esteban OCON Alpine +0.742
10 Oscar PIASTRI McLaren NO TIME
11 Fernando ALONSO Aston Martin 1:12.128
12 Valtteri BOTTAS Kick Sauber +0.099
13 Nico HULKENBERG Haas +0.182
14 Lance STROLL Aston Martin +0.244
15 ZHOU Guanyu Kick Sauber +0.610
16 Kevin MAGNUSSEN Haas 1:12.937
17 Yuki TSUNODA RB +0.048
18 Daniel RICCIARDO RB +0.138
19 Alexander ALBON Williams +0.216
20 Logan SARGEANT Williams +0.572

*Three-place grid penalty to be applied

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