Max Verstappen has beaten his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez by two-tenths of a second to secure pole position for the season closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The two-time champion improved on his final run in Q3 to beat his teammate following their tense battle in Interlagos last weekend.<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s fastest time was set at the end of the session, as Perez moved up to second ahead of his rival for second in the championship Charles Leclerc by four-thousandths of a second. The Dutchman goes into this race knowing most races in Yas Marina have been won from pole as he looks for his third consecutive win in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n
Verstappen did look to have a problem early on in Q3, but while Perez questioned the lack of the tow during the first run. The two Red Bull\u2019s looked to be difficult to beat under the lights, Perez looked also to struggle and slide wide through the final corner as he struggled for traction.<\/p>\n
Perez in both Q1 and Q2 looked to be the driver to beat, as Verstappen struggled before responding after struggling with grip. But Verstappen found the car more to his liking in the final session, despite what he described as a “scare” when the car switched off as he tried to leave the garage for his first run and he had to reset all the systems.<\/p>\n
Verstappen said, \u201cQ3 was good, before that it was all a bit up and down. I was supposed to drive out in front of Checo but the engine shut off and we had to reboot the car. We managed to keep everything under control and do a good lap. The car has been good all weekend – back to normal. We knew we had a quick car but we made a few mistakes in Brazilian hindsight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc was a tenth and a half ahead of his Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz, the Monacan four-hundredths of a second behind Perez. Ferrari has looked to have struggled to find enough pace to challenge Red Bull, although the Monacan did put in purple sectors he was almost a tenth and a half off pole.<\/p>\n
Leclerc said he expected it to be “close” with Perez in the race. The team have struggled with tyre degradation in recent races but Leclerc said the team had “put quite a lot of attention on that this weekend” so he hoped it would not be a problem.<\/p>\n
Sainz had almost the same story as his teammate, he did go faster on his final run but was left a tenth and a half behind Leclerc. Mercedes looked not to be in the fight for pole position with Lewis Hamilton a quarter of a second behind Sainz but beat his teammate George Russell by three thousandths.<\/p>\n
Hamilton\u2019s fifth place sealed his record ending fifteen seasons with at least a pole position, it looks highly likely that his race record will also end. Mercedes however have tended to have better race pace this season, they could potentially fight with Ferrari as their rivals for second have been littered by errors and tension recently in Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n
Russell said, \u201cThe pace may have been a little bit further away that we would have liked. We know we don’t have the most efficient car, and on the long straights we are just getting mullered by Red Bull\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the pace shown this weekend has been as strong for Mercedes, it looked just to fade away and they were also unable to challenge the Ferrari\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The talking point heading into the Abu Dhabi weekend was whether Mercedes could challenge Red Bull again after claiming their maiden 2022 win in Sao Paulo, and they got an ideal springboard on Friday by topping the first practice session and then being competitive in the second.<\/p>\n
CEO and team principal Toto Wolff said, \u201cI just heard today is World Toilet Day, so I think that’s one to put in the toilet. I think we just didn’t get the job done. We went backwards and they (Ferrari) did a little step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercedes say the Yas Marina circuit was thought to be one of their worst of the season but still expected much more than a near full-second deficit, with the W13 losing half a second on the straights and not making up enough time in the corners.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris put his McLaren seventh going six hundredths faster than Esteban Ocon. Sebastian Vettel, on what is likely to be his final weekend, had a brilliant qualifying going ninth. The four-time champion was over a tenth behind Ocon, in his final qualifying it looked like he had rediscovered the form he has lacked in the latter part of his career and scraped his way into Q3.<\/p>\n
Vettel was nearly a tenth faster than his former teammate Daniel Ricciardo who was tenth, in what could be also the Australian\u2019s final race.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso was the surprise Q2 knockout, this season the two-time champion had regularly getting through to the final part of qualifying. But as the chequered flag fell, he was pushed out by Ricciardo by three-hundredths having only improved to ninth on his final run.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was another driver to be shuffled out as the track improved towards the end of Q2, he was pushed out by Norris and Leclerc. But the Alpha Tauri driver was six-thousandths of a second faster than Mick Schumacher, another driver set to leave the sport after this weekend.<\/p>\n
Lance Stroll and Guanyu Zhou rounded out the cars who made it through to the second part of qualifying, the Canadian going six hundredths faster than the Alfa Romeo.<\/p>\n
After taking his first pole position eight days ago in Sao Paulo, Kevin Magnussen failed to get out of Q1. The Dane was half a hundredth behind Tsunoda when the session finished, surprising as Magnussen has regularly managed to beat Schumacher and get through to Q2.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly is another who has regularly beaten his teammate and was also knocked out in Q1. In his final race for Alpha Tauri, the Frenchman was a hundredth and a half ahead of Valtteri Bottas. The Finn struggled on his final attempt to get heat into his tyres thanks to being caught in traffic.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon out-qualified Williams teammate Nicolas Latifi by three hundredths, ahead of their final qualifying as teammates.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen has beaten his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez by two-tenths of a second to secure pole position for the season closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The two-time champion improved on his final run in Q3 to beat his teammate following their tense battle in Interlagos last weekend. Verstappen\u2019s fastest time was set at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,63,64,65,369,390,664,709,814,1283,1298,1597,1598,1637,1642,1808,1843,2064,2077,2174,2175],"class_list":["post-11349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-51","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-gp","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-george-russell","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-qualifying","tag-qualifying-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-uae","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-yas-marina","tag-yas-marina-circuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}