In a final qualifying session in which the soft tires were only enough for a single flying lap – unlike the multiple pilots last week in Las Vegas – Lewis Hamilton also retired for Mercedes in Q2 and Sergio Perez regretted a track limit in the other. Error RB19.
In the third quarter, Verstappen set a time of 1:23.445 minutes in his first of two runs, with the world champion well ahead of the rest at this point as he was the only one using new tires.
In the second round, Verstappen was at the back of the leading group up to this point, but was unable to improve his time.
The rest made it, but not enough: Leclerc shot up to second place from just over a second behind after the first Q3 runs and ended up 0.139 seconds ahead of Verstappen.
Piastri took third place ahead of George Russell, who improved the rankings with the fastest time from Q3 in the final sector and moved up to fourth place.
Lando Norris appeared to be the biggest threat to Verstappen, but he ultimately failed with the new tires as he suffered a massive sideways moment at Turn 13, which cost the Brit 0.4 seconds in the final third of the lap alone.
Then came Yuki Tsunoda, Fernando Alonso and Nico Hülkenberg, while Pierre Gasly completed the top 10.
Perez’s final lap was enough for sixth place, but he lost it after going too wide out of Turn 1, where he had a wild sideways moment on his first attempts in Q3.
Verstappen crossed Q2 with just one pass on new soft tires, while the rest completed a test drive with used soft tires at the start of the middle segment.
In the end, when all the other Verstappen had to do without new soft tires, Russell’s improvement eliminated his Mercedes teammate Hamilton, who complained on the way back to the pits: “There’s something wrong with this car.”
Then came Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Alex Albon and Daniel Ricciardo, with Albon running his second run offset and completing his final flight well ahead of the others – just as Williams had done at the end of the opening segment.
In the first qualifying, where the entire field was covered by a second, Perez’s final improvement took him to second behind Verstappen and knocked out Carlos Sainz along with Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu and Logan Sargeant.
The top four set personal bests on their second and final flight, with Sainz complaining about traffic affecting his final run, but Sargeant lost both Q1 times because he went over the track limit in Turn 1.
His best of those two laps was his first, but that still wouldn’t have been fast enough to advance.
Gasly and Piastri faced a stewards’ investigation following qualifying over a possible interference incident late in the third quarter.